Bottling Day Steps

Since I've just finished bottling my latest brew, i thought it a good time to go through my steps on bottling day.

Equipment and supplies

• Plastic Fermenting bucket with spigot and bottle filling attachment. I don't use a second bottling bucket or a secondary fermenter
• 750ml glass bottles, caps and a hammer capper.
• Glass measuring jug, measuring spoons and stirring stick.
• Bleach or Sodium Percarbonate for sanitizing everything.

Procedure

1. Sanitize everything

• All of my bottles start out cleaned. I'd recommend cleaning them out as you use them so you don't need to clean them on bottling day. So, I simply need to soak them in a sanitizing solution for about 30 mins. I've been using bleach (4ml/Liter or water or 1 tablespoon per gallon), although there are other sanitizing solutions which have the added benefit of not requiring rinsing.  The easiest option is to get a big plastic tub large enough to hold all your bottles, fill it up with sanitizing solution and soak the bottles in there. Much better than doing one bottle at a time.
• I also put the bottle filler, stirring stick, measuring jug and spoons in the sanitizing solution. I put the bottle caps in a separate bowl. Basically everything that will touch the beer needs to be sanitized.

2. Prime the beer with sugar solution

• You need to add sugar to the bottled beer for it to carbonate. Some people recommend putting a teaspoon or so in each bottle. This is time consuming and also quite inaccurate. It also means you're putting in unsanitized sugar which could cause infection. Here's what I do: 
• Boil up 500ml water
• Add approx 140gm Dextrose (Corn sugar). For help working out the amount to add for a certain level of carbonation, either use a program such as Beer Smith, or check the chart here.
• Mix the sugar with the boiled water and let it cool to under 30C (85F)
• Pour the sugar mixture into the fermenting barrel and gently stir it in, being careful to not stir up too much of the sediment.
• Let it sit about 30 minutes to allow the mixture to mix in and to let the yeast settle back down.
• The beer mixture is now infused with the additional sugars which will provide the carbonation in the bottles. Some recommend using a bottling bucket, adding the sugar mixture to the bottling bucket and siphoning the beer into that. This would probably be good, but seems an extra step, i.e. more time.

3. Fill the bottles

• Get some water boiling. You need to rinse each bottle before filling it, so you'll need to keep the boiled water supply going. Pre-boil a few litres if you can, but fill it into sanitized pouring containers.
• Take the sanitized bottles out of their solution and let them drip dry to get rid of as much of the bleach solution as possible.
• Attach the bottle filler to the spigot, then take your first bottle, give it a rinse with the pre-boiled water and start filling it. You want to leave about an inch of air at the top of the bottle.
• Take a cap, rinse it with the boiled water and cap the bottle. That's the first bottle done. 
• Repeat the steps until you get down to the bottom of your barrel. I leave the last couple of liters in the bottom of the barrel since this is mostly the yeast trub. 

4. Clean up

• Clean out your fermenting barrel then pour some sanitizing solution into the barrel and dump all your equipment in to the barrel. This means it's ready for use next time after a quick clean and sanitize.
• Assuming you've used the kitchen as your bottling plant, clean up any mess and give the floor a mop. Leave no trace of the bottling operation :)