Effe YA!
This weekend I bottled up my IPA and decided that there needed to be a how-to post on bottling beer. Starting out there are some underlying factors that are CRUCIAL in bottling beer. Those factors are: proper cleaning and sanitization.

Tools Needed

• Bottling bucket
• Auto-siphon
• “Magic wand”
• Tubing
• Thermometer
• Hydrometer
• 24-26, 22oz bottles
• Bottletree [optional]
• Corn sugar [bottling sugar]

Contact Times and Amounts
Cleaning:
I use Oxyclean Free as my cleaner. There are others out there, but I like the ‘ol Oxi! You need to use SUPER hot water and the amount is 1 tablespoon per gallon. So for a 5 gallon bucket, use 5 tablespoons. Contact time I use is 30 minutes. Sigaro and I were having a discussion on this earlier and 30 minutes may be overkill. Confirmed by Sigaro that 30 minutes is the proper contact time for Oxyclean and other products of the same chemical makeup. Today I only did 15 minutes. The bottles came out clean. I may even go down to 10 minutes in future adventures. Also keep in mind that you have to rinse after you pull things out of the Oxiclean. I use warm water, hot enough to get the Oxiclean off, but also cool enough to put my hands under the running water. In the future I may get some BIG buckets so I can do more than 8 at a time.

Sanitizing:
I use BTF iodophor, there are plenty of other products out there, but it works for me. Again, use what works for you. BTF is a non rinse solution. Use 1 teaspoon[not TABLESPOONS] per 1 and 1/2 [1.5] gallons. Also note that instead of the hot water, use cold water.

The Process
Keep in mind that everything has to be first cleaned, then sanitized. That includes the bottling tree!

• Dissembled my bottle tree and put it in the Oxiclean, rinsed it, then put the parts into the BTF solution. Then assembled it
• Put your bottles into the Oxiclean, follow the contact times, I outlined above, RINSE [crucial]
• I use a straw to allow the air to escape the bottle as I put them in the solutions [see pics below!]
• Move the bottles over to the iodophor, move them over to the bottletree!
• After the bottles are done, clean and sanitize your other tools your other items
• Get yourself 3/4 cup of corn sugar [aka bottling sugar] into 1 cup of water
• Boil that for about 3-4 minutes [your essentially sanitizing the sugar water]
• You need to return it to room temperature [about 70 degrees]
• Add the sugar water to your bottling bucket
• Using your auto-siphon, rack [transfer] your BEER to your bottling bucket with your sugar water
• Keep in mind that your going to be using the auto-siphon and tubing again, keep it from getting in contact with un-sanitized things
• Next rack over the beer and sugar water over to your bottles!
  • Connect your auto-siphon to your tubing to your “magic-wand”
  • Put the “magic-wand” into the bottle, fill bottle until the beer is at the very top
  • Pull the “magic-wand” out, the head space is the perfect amount for bottle conditioning
• Place your cap on the bottle, use your capper to cap that puppy!
• I rinse my bottles after I am all done capping to get the bonus beer off of the outside of the bottles
• Put those bottles into a case and place that into a dark closet for 3 weeks
• DRINK said carbonated beer!

Tags: bottle, bottling, bottling beer 101, how to bottle beer, IPA

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Enhance Your Knowledge, Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.