Bottling Your Brew - Decision Time

Last week we put down a batch of beer. Time to bottle? There are a few simple decisions you should have already made by now.  In this post, we quickly cover some pro's and con's...


First thing to decide is; 'Glass or PET?'.

GLASS
It's obvious, really... you buy beer from the shops and it's in glass bottles.  You'd think the experts that bottle your commercial beer would use the best technology, right? But bottling in glass comes with it's own complications. You need crown caps, you need a cap press, you have to cap a lot of bottles and glass will smash (not good around swimming pools).

SOFTDRINK PLASTIC (PET) BOTTLES
It's recycling at it's finest.  Mrs Six3seven drinks Coke Zero, so I have a constant supply of 1.25L PET bottles. Some say it's sacrilege, but soft drink bottles do have their advantages. Mainly, no special equipment required to cap them, you just screw on the lid. Each bottle is 1.25L, so you're handling less bottles. The 5 molded feet on the base has the unique advantage of packing the sediment better, making them better for travel (to parties!).

What do I do?  A combination of both, I do two cartons (48 bottles) in glass with crown caps, and the rest, usually 4 or 5, into 1.25L plastic bottles.

HOW WILL YOU PRIME?
Last week we started the stage one fermentation, and made alcohol with some complex sugars for flavor and body.  By now all the sugar has been consumed by the yeast so there is no more activity at the water seal.  The yeast is still in there, which we need to use to make gas for carbonation, and we'll need to feed it... this is called priming and is done with dextrose. You need to prime just right, not enough and you'll have flat beer, too much and you'll have a whole bunch of grenades waiting to go BOOM!  But will you prime individually, or bulk prime?

INDIVIDUAL PRIMING
You can buy a priming measure, and use it to put the right amount of sugar in each bottle. You can buy sugar tablets, already measure out for stubbies or long necks.  If your sugar tablets are broken (which they will do in transit), you need to discard any that are inconsistent. Neither of these give you a lot of option when it comes to non-standard storage vessels.

BULK PRIMING
I'm lazy.  I use 330ml stubbies and 1.25L soft drink bottles, so non-standard are the only vessels I use. And I'm lazy.  So I bulk prime, because you measure out one batch of sugar just once.  To bulk prime, you calculate the right amount of sugar based on the volume of beer, mix it in then just fill bottles, then cap.  Easy.  Downside is, you need a second drum to do your bulk priming in for reasons we'll discuss in the next post.

MARKING UP YOUR PRODUCT
There are plenty of options... paper labels, custom labels, marking bottle tops.  My preference is to keep a 'Batch Diary', I list the recipe I used, dates, quantities, etc.  Each batch is serial numbered, and I simply mark the bottle top with the number.  No labels to remove between batches!!