I’m new to brewing, and have done two batches of extract beer, and have a quick question
When siphoning beer into bottles, my siphon will continue to spout beer unless I keep it above the level of my bottling container. I have achieved this by sticking the end of my siphon between the backs of two high rising chairs and pressuring the chairs together so that the siphon does not slip.
However, this is very annoying as I must pressure the chairs together EACH time I bottle a bottle.
I was wondering if you guys had better solutions, which you probably do.
As mentioned above, a bottle bucket would work fine.
Though I spent 15 years bottling form a syphon tube and never had any issues. I say forget about the bottling valve. I always just used a syphon hose clamp. Keep it as simple as possible.
A bottling bucket is different than an Ale Pail. a bottling bucket has a hole drilled near the bottom and all of your bottling is done via gravity. With a short piece of tubing, a bottling wand and a bottling bucket you can go from clean empty bottles to full capped bottles in under 20 minutes. Yes, it is an extra piece of equipment but for under $15 for the whole setup it is totally worth it.
I have a bottling bucket with a valve and I still use my racking cane/bottling wand. I’ll stuff a dish towel under the front of the bucket to tip it back a bit and stick my racking cane at the lowest point to get every last drop.
for what it is worth, that is exactly how I do it. Siphon (gently) the beer from the fermenter into the “bottling bucket”, then use the spring loaded auto filler wand thing. Plus I put the carbination sugars in fairly early in the siphoning and the circulating motion (I think) mixes it is pretty well.
Finally, I then bottle over an open dish washer. Any spill over goes right onto the dish washer door. when I am all done, shut the door and clean up is done…
