Bottling day!

The time has come for bottling! Tonight I ended up bottling both the Spaceship Juice and the Dubbel Trubbel.  Spaceship was 49 bottles and Dubbel was 52 12oz with one 750mL because sometimes it's nice to age in large bottles.  I am still looking for a label for the Spaceship Juice (however, I have had two people say they were interested in making one!).  The label for Dubbel Trubbel (round 3) was graciously designed and drawn by Alicia* about a year ago and I continue using it. It is AMAZING if I do say so myself and I would love to keep that theme of the monks in the future, but who knows. Take a look at it below...

The setup and method I use for bottling is not that complicated, but since I have done this so many times I have a way to do it that seems to be easy enough and fast enough on my own.  For starters I have an autosiphon with a clip so that I can keep the end from sitting in the sediments, which is a great plus.  I don't know why it took me a year to buy the clip, because it changed everything.  I also have two buckets set up: one with B-Brite (caustic sanitizer) and one with Easy Clean (oxygen based no-rinse sanitizer) for cleaning my hoses, siphon, caps and bottles. The first thing I do is dissolve 3/4 cup per gallon of beer of bottling sugar and add it in, stir, and let settle. Next, I sink a dozen bottles at a time in the caustic and then rinse, until I have enough - usually about 55.  Then a quick rinse of each one in the sink and sink a dozen in the no-rinse.  At this point the caps go in a colander and stay in the no-rinse as well for a bit while I set up the siphon and hose. After removing the caps and bottles from the sanitizer, I add the next dozen bottles to the no-rinse. Fill the 12 bottles, cap, get out of the way, and then cycle through, 12 at a time until the beer is about 3 inches from the bottom of the carboy, then tilt it with a wedge. Finish filling and capping, then done!

Next time, a quick picture of labeling.  Thinking of brewing this weekend as well. I have the yeast starter for another RyePA which I might start up tonight or tomorrow... That was a good beer!


Anyone have any suggestions for recipes? Or if you want to see what I have in the closet or in the lineup, check out BeerCalculus at HopVille.  It's like BeerSmith but online and free. http://hopville.com/brewer/recipes/Rockstar1 (That's my page :)


* Alicia has a few websites as well. I am only very familiar with http://www.skyfallmanga.com/  Please take a look!