First Bottling Day - oh yea!!

Date - November 25, 2007

So, four weeks in and I'm one more step to finishing my first beer!!

I don't remember too much from my first bottling experience, except for being obsessed with sanitizing. This seems to be the step where if you're not careful, you can ruin a whole batch of beer in no time.

A dishwasher here is very handy and in fact, bottling beer is the only time I use mine!! In general I use 22-oz. bombers to cut down on the amount of capping, but more and more I use 12-oz. bottles to allow for easier testing during the carbonation phase.

All in all my first day of bottling was quite smooth. Took me about 1.75 hours from start to finish and no major issues to report. That won't always bee the case...haha.

So, three weeks to carbonate - can I wait that long???

My general bottling procedure:

1. Sanitize dishwasher
   
2. Sanitize bottles - soak in bath of sanitized water; drip dry in dishwasher
3. Sanitize bottle caps and small rack for drying
4. Sanitize siphon, tubing, sample tube, bottling bucket, filler
5. Let everything have a little time to dry
   
6. Boil 5 oz. of corn sugar in 1 pint of water for ~ 10 mins.
7. Dump sugar in bottling bucket
8. Siphon beer into bottling bucket
9. Fill bottles
10. Cap bottles
11. Clean up and label caps
    

Sanitized bottles drying in my dishwasher



Getting ready to fill them up



Red Barron Capper



Two cases of beer!!!!



Sample and hydrometer