So, after about 20 batches in 2 years or so of brewing, I have begun letting some processes fall by the wayside in the hustle of cooking up a brew. This includes ditching the dishwasher for bottles, and instead spot-checking them for mold, rinsing them and then letting them sit in sani for 15 minutes, then being pulled out to dry. I think my favorite innovation is taking a full step out of the bottling process by making the bucket redundant: I can bottle in 2 steps (fill and cap) with no help using this method. The brilliant fix? Masking tape around the top of the carboy to create a friction fit for the siphon, enough tension to keep it from falling onto the cake but little enough to be able to easily move it as the beer level in the fermenter drops, with the siphon connecting directly to the filler wand.
Admittedly, I haven’t tried this method with any carbonation scheme besides carb tabs in individual bottles, so the priming sugar addition could be tricky. Interestingly, I have not seen any infection or negative effects from using this process, with the possible exception of a loss in head retention on some bottles due to them not drying out all the way from the sanitizer. So what about you? Are these dumb ideas or do you also use shortcuts that don’t seem to affect the quality of your beer?