Ahhh...Screw It!

Yes, screw it. As in screw-top bottles. I'm building up my collection of empty bottles because I'm going to bottle my first brew in the Redondo Beach brewery instead of kegging it. We had a little shindig here, a housewarming party if you will, and I bought an assortment of beers for the guests. I thought I could save the bottles and use them to bottle the first brew.

Well, I thought wrong. It turns out some of the craft/import beers I bought use screw top bottles. Screw tops are not recommended for bottling homebrew because of breakage and sealing issues. So now I'm screwed. Well not really. I'll just recycle the screw top bottles and build up my stash some other way.

Just as a point of reference, so I don't buy them again, at least when I'm short on bottles:

Wingwalker
Tecate

I'll add to this list as I run across more. Of course I'm not even going to list BudMillerCoors, because all their bottles are screw tops. Ahhhh...Screw It!

Friday Night Bottling

I bottled the remainder of the keg of Superbowl Stout tonight. I meant to take a photo of the counter-pressure filler in action, but was so into the bottling, I forgot to do it. Just picture one in your head, ok?

I bottled a few big bottles first, because I wanted to have some to give away, plus it seems like I get more foam when starting out, so I was going to have low fills due to foam, I would rather not have those on the small bottles I enter in competitions. Well that meant I only got nine twelve ounce bottles filled before the keg ran out. Oh well, that's enough for four competitions plus a spare bottle.

Now it's time to take Bosworth the Wonder Dog for a walk.

Why Sanitize When You Can Sterilize?

I'm not a fan of bottling. It is very time and labor intensive, especially if you reuse bottles instead of buying new ones. However, I do enter contests and occasionally give away beer as gifts, so I do have to bottle to do so. I have a counter pressure filler so I can fill carbonated beer right from the keg, which saves me the time waiting for the beer to carbonate in the bottle. You still have to wash and sanitize the bottles, but lately I have been sterilizing my bottles instead of sanitizing them.

I do this by heating them up in the oven. I cover the mouths of the bottles with aluminum foil, and place them on their sides on the oven racks. Then I crank the oven all the way up to maximum, 550F. Once the oven reaches this temperature, I turn it off, and let the bottles cool very slowly in the closed oven. The reason for this is twofold. One, the bottles stay at a hot enough temperature for a long enough time to completely sterilize them. Two, if glass cools too quickly, it will shatter. Be careful not to place any bottle too close to the heating elements, the quick heat up will cause them to shatter as well.

Since the bottles are covered, they will stay sterilized until I am ready to use them. As you can see from the photo above, I can sterlize 20-30 bottles at one time, depending on their size.