My first day with the little bottler aka little brother

[arthur]

Today was the day. Its my one day off work each week and it was time to bottle my youngs harvest bitter kit and So I thought it be good to share this experiance with you all (including pictures). This is my second brew now and it actually tastes ok, so should be good after conditioning. Iv opted for 20 bottles and the rest in my pressure keg. My only regrets is that I hadnt seen a post about using DME instead of white sugar when making the wort, but the next beer will and Im attempting to create a yeast starter bottle from a bottle of teignworthy beachcomber beer for the next brew to.

So this is how it goes. Iv just got my little bottler and love it, hence calling it my little brother, much faster than bottling my last brew, the only thing that can go better next time is that I wont have to use sterilised blue tack to stop beer leakage! I was over anxious and added my priming sugar solution and beer to the keg, not realising the keg tap has four slats of plastic which hold the stick well but makes it leak like a sieve. I employed blue tack as a bodge after a failed attempt trying to heat up a short piece of hose pipe to fit over the tap. Unfortunately I didnt take any pictures of this

Here is the keg and little bottler, the keg has the 8g CO2 injector.


Sterilisation and cleaning: Every thing was washed using VWP, rinsed twice and sterilesed using videne solution (1.25ml videne to 1lt water).

Videne antispetic solution as bought from supedrug chemist for £5.40)


Here is the bottles with some VS (videne solution) in them ready to be swilled, emptied, shaken and placed on the other drainer (really got to buy a bottle rinser and tree for next time). Note the clear bottle amongst the browns, Im going to make it policy to have one in each brew to use as an inspection bottle.


Sterilised crown caps and capper.


All the bottles are now ready to be filled, the jug of VS was used to dip the neck of each bottle just before filling.


Bottling Procedure: Filling and capping. Does anyone else have issues with similar cappers? Sometimes it sticks on and needs some heavy action to get it to release the bottle! Only on three of all 20 bottles though, so I can forgive it.

First bottle in the capped position


Same bottle capped


I found that filling the bottle halfway up the neck to the top of the bottle gave a good level of beer afterwards, whats you opinions on this should I leave less air space in each bottle? This was the only bottle that frothed




All finished, and there is the bottle of beachcomber that I will try to make a yeast starter from!


Well if you got this far many thanks, hope you can answer or possibly find my couple of questions.

Just a sneaky last picture of my newest creation that needs bottling soon. Im quite impressed with my self here. Its a summer fruits turbo cider, made with apple juice, strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, one lemon, one apple and some root ginger. It smells fantastic. The left dj had 500g of white sugar added to make the o.g up to 1.078 compared to the right dj which had an o.g of 1.046. If its a success I will make a post with detailed instructions sometime.


Cheers

[delboy]

When using the bottling stick i let it come right up to the top, i find the amount of beer that the stick itself displaces leaves the beer at a nice level.

[b.all]

i agree with that, fill it right up to the top so the beer is about to spill over and then remove it. Apparently the bottling sticks were designed such that for an average height bottle it would leave the perfect amount of headspace if filled in this way.

[garwatts]

And another little tip........
Sometimes if you add sugar to the bottle before the beer it can fizz up quite a lot. So either add it in the secondary or after you put the beer in the bottle

[craigmarshall]

Note the clear bottle amongst the browns, Im going to make it policy to have one in each brew to use as an inspection bottle.

Whenever I bottle, (either beer or cider), I use a plastic PET bottle for the clear bottle. This way it can do double duty. It can both tell me when the beer is clearing and it can tell me (with a squeeze) whether the contents are carbonating, and perhaps more importantly if you're just starting out, whether they're overcarbonating. If you squeeze it hard and there is no give at all, perhaps let a little CO2 out of the glass bottles as a safety measure!

All the bottles are now ready to be filled, the jug of VS was used to dip the neck of each bottle just before filling.

This is an interesting idea that I've not seen elsewhere, I might give this a go next time I bottle up.

Bottling Procedure: Filling and capping. Does anyone else have issues with similar cappers? Sometimes it sticks on and needs some heavy action to get it to release the bottle! Only on three of all 20 bottles though, so I can forgive it.

I am kicking myself about my bottle collection. I collected loads of bottles before realising that over half had impossible to remove labels, and some had difficult to cap lids. The bad label ones are: White shield, any bath ales, any hook norton brewery, and probably others. The bad for capping ones are: Hook Norton brewery.

Favourite bottles for me (weighing up the contents, label removability and capping easiness): Old Peculiar, Bitter and Twisted, Black Sheep (and Golden Sheep), Cotswold Lager, and probably others. You get to know the distance from the capping lip and the top (so you can decide in the shop), and you get to know the texture of the labels that come off easily - basically the papery ones. 5 minutes soak in luke warm water, and they drop off. A little scrub later with washing up liquid for some of them and they come up spotless.

I found that filling the bottle halfway up the neck to the top of the bottle gave a good level of beer afterwards, whats you opinions on this should I leave less air space in each bottle?

For the type of bottles you've got, I'd aim for just over halfway up the neck as a finished position. I don't use a little bottler, so I don't know how they work, but another way to measure is about 20-25mm or about a thumb's thickness. In some of yours the whole neck is empty. This will probably be fine for this batch, but you should aim for a little fuller.

All finished, and there is the bottle of beachcomber that I will try to make a yeast starter from!

Never tried that one, but all bottle conditioned beers seem to taste good to me, I've never tried harvesting yeast either, but I should give it a go one of these days!

Just a sneaky last picture of my newest creation that needs bottling soon. Im quite impressed with my self here. Its a summer fruits turbo cider, made with apple juice, strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, one lemon, one apple and some root ginger. It smells fantastic. The left dj had 500g of white sugar added to make the o.g up to 1.078 compared to the right dj which had an o.g of 1.046. If its a success I will make a post with detailed instructions sometime.

Sounds great - I've done a few ciders myself, including some like strawberry cider and cherry cider. The best I've done is the strawberry, I was only really doing these as a prelude to beer making though (which is more complicated - so I was trying to start easy). On balance I prefer the results of my beer making, but then I always preferred beer anyway, so it's not surprising.

Cheers,
Craig

[WishboneBrewery]

What a great Little invention the bottling stick is

[arthur]

Excellent feedback, many thanks. I love the little stick, so much easier than my siphon. I went to my local brew shop today to buy two more taps that the bottler would fit to replace my old clunky taps, got home and it doesnt fit will just bodge a coupling for it at some point before I get round to making a decent one.

Great idea using a clear PET bottle, two birds with one stone, I hadnt thought about checking for carbonation levels during conditioning, I usally crack open a bottle to check

How do you release the pressure on capped bottles though? Do you simply lever the cap up slightly then close again? Seems alot of work to do with 20+ bottles per brew is there an easy or tried and tested method?

The wychwood brewery uses really nice bottles full of great tasting beer IMHO, but I had trouble capping these ones with my capping tool, I might invest in one of those fancy table mount capping devices Iv seen. The other thing Iv noticed with bottles is the difference in weight, upto and over 100g difference, the youngs bottles I have are the heaviest at 407g!

Cheers Adam

[phatboytall]

Got my little bottler the other week, i had a quick trial with some water in the fv with it attached, but i couldn't work out how to remove all the air from the bottling tube?

Is there a trick to clearing all the air out from the tube when you turn the tap on? Don't want it oxidising.

[Normski]

Got my little bottler the other week, i had a quick trial with some water in the fv with it attached, but i couldn't work out how to remove all the air from the bottling tube?

Is there a trick to clearing all the air out from the tube when you turn the tap on? Don't want it oxidising.

It's not going to oxygenate it. On the 1st squirt it'll just pass through the bottle. The air is in front of the beer.

[edgearsenal]

The way I do it is leave it filled with water. Attach too the tap on the bottling bucket and empty the first stick of water in to a glass till you see beer at the bottom of the glass stop and replace the glass with a bottle to be filled and your good to go