The frustration of homebrewing

[LordEoin]

Since the wee 'un was born I've been slacking on keeping my stock up and only recently started a new drive to get all the bottles filled.
Within arms reach there's 36 pint bottles of pilsener, 36 of london bitter, 10L of barrel stout, demijohn of blackberry wine, demijohn of elderberry wine, mini demi-john of summer fruit wine and 15 liters of Finlandia 'Tumma' in primary.
Upstairs there's another 27 bottles of assorted wines (dandelion, gorse, elderberry, cranberry) ageing.

And only 6 pint bottles of IPA left ready to drink 

[Garry]

When there's young kids in the house, it's hard to motivate yourself to do bottling. I've got 3 full FV's ready for bottling. Instead of bottling them I'm thinking about what to brew next!

I'm working on something which I hope will help, here's a sneak preview 

[Ciderhead]

Holy uck, in wicklow we use a kitchen table.
I tip my hat to your engineering abilities.
Can't believe with a garage full of kegs you are at that milarky

[LordEoin]

someone's been at the auto-cad again!

[Ciderhead]

someone's been at the auto-cad again!

[Bazza]

Hah. Ingenious.

I find, however that the actual bottling part is no bother. It's all the sh*t you have to do before that - sterilising, priming, sterilising, (rinsing), etc. An hour into the process I still haven't filled a single bottle!

-Barry

[RichC]

Fair play Gary, is that a 2 bottle system or will it be more? I've contemplated a system like that with maybe 4 bottles but you'd need some sort of float switches. I currently fill 2 simultaneously which gives me a great speed up. Actual bottle filling time is about 20mins

[Garry]

No autocad used this time. Just a tape and pencil.

Barry's right, bottling is probably the most rewarding part of the process.

RichC, it's 2 bottles at the moment but I hope to make it 4 when it's finished.

Sorry for de-railing the tread Eoin!

[LordEoin]

Derail away Garry. I hold no grudge over tangents. Some of the best information comes from tangents.

You obviously find getting the last drop out of the bucket frustrating if you're going to such trouble to make this tilted stand (i tilt using a little tupperware bowl)
Bazza gets frustrated by cleaning and sterilizing.

What else is pissing people off? Vent people, vent!
Maybe someone will reply with a solution

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Conical fermenters help a lot with getting the last drops out. Bit pricey though unless you can repurpose livestock feed hoppers.

Bottling wands are great, but they decrease the bore of the tube and you can get really bad flow. Possibly using a wider tube and a wider bottling wand would help. Or a greater vertical drop to get good pressure head.

Do all the messy splashy business on a mat that can get washed.

Use a bottle crate to fix all the bottles to be filled in one location, and then moved to another for capping (preferably by your bottling buddy).

Use a good, light to illuminate the bottles so that you know when they are nearly filled.

[RichC]

My dip tube solution(that i robbed from someone else) to getting everything out of the bottling bucket. Thats about 20ml of beer you see still in the bucket and it can be tilted with a beermat as the tube drains just about everything


dip tube made from a silcone stopper with a hole and a piece of 10mm bent copper

[LordEoin]

I like it!

[Garry]

I got a chance to test drive my bottling machine thingy tonight. It's the berries 

I probably won't add anymore bottling wands to it, I was under pressure to keep up with 2. Unless you had someone else to do the capping/crating for you.

I only planned to do 1 batch tonight but ended up bottling 2 batches (80ish pints  ) in 2.5 hours.

The way I have the bottling bucket tilted is great for getting out the last drop but I can only barely fit 20L into a 30L bucket. I think Rich's dip tube is a much better idea in hindsight. Less chance of dropping the bucket on the floor too!

It's my first time using mostly flip top bottles too which are are great time saver (thanks CH).