Cheap and easy homebrew bottle preparation

I've read other homebrewers rant about the difficulty of bottling and rave about the joys of kegging.  I really don't find the bottling process difficult at all and don't have much interest in getting into kegging.  I love the option of being able to give a bottle of my homebrew to a friend or take a 6 pack of it to a party.  Kegs, while easier to fill, are also expensive and cumbersome to deal with. If you are a beginning homebrewer or have struggled with bottling in the past, you should try following this process that has been cheap, easy and highly successful!

Necessary supplies to prepare bottles for a 5 gallon batch of homebrew:

1. (50) Poptop Beer Bottles - You can't use twist offs, but long necks or short necks are fine
2. (3) 5 gallon buckets - $3-4 each at Home Depot.  You could also just use 1 bucket and fill it multiple times but I like to do all 50 bottles at once.
3. Oxiclean (unscented) - I bought the 3.5lb tub Kroger brand for around $7.
4. Scouring Pad - $1
5. Bottle Drainer Tree - Optional but HIGHLY highly recommended, $20.
6. A dishwasher
7. A friend

TOTAL EQUIPMENT COST: $20-$40

STEP 1 - COLLECT 50 POP TOP BEER BOTTLES - How? By drinking beers, of course.  If you are in a hurry to get bottles and don't want to drink 50 beers at once, you could ask friends for their bottles or dumpster dive for them at your local recycling center (gross to me, but people do it.)  You could also buy 50 bottles, but why would you want to pay $.60 for an empty bottle when you can pay $1.20 for a full bottle?  Buy a 12-pack and save the cardboard box.  Rinse the empty bottles.  I always double rinse - fill the bottle 1/3 with water, put my thumb over the opening and shake it vigorously a couple of seconds, empty, and repeat.  When you have consumed and rinsed the entire 12-pack, put the empty bottles back in the original box.  Watch out for some beers that use industrial strength stickers and not paper & glue labels.  For example, Cigar City uses labels that are IMPOSSIBLE to get off.  You should drink the Cigar City, love the Cigar City but recycle the bottles - it's not worth the hassle or time to deal with them.  


STEP 2 - SOAK THE BOTTLES IN OXICLEAN FOR 1-2 DAYS - A standard 5 gallon bucket can hold around 18 bottles.  I have some taller buckets (originally for storing batting practice baseballs) that can hold 24 bottles.  If you want to prep enough bottles at one time you're going to need 2 or 3 buckets.  Put a scoop  of OxyClean in the bucket, fill it about 80% full with warm water, and then start dunking your bottles.  I dunk and then quickly rinse my hands and have never had issues with skin irritation, but you might want to wear rubber gloves.

STEP 3 - SCRUB AND RINSE THE BOTTLES - After a day or two in the Oxiclean, the labels will fall right off.  As you empty the Oxiclean water from the bottle into the sink, scrub it quickly with the scouring pad to remove any glue residue that is left.  There is usually very little and it comes off easily. Keep the trash can handy to throw the labels away - it's best if they don't slip down the garbage disposal, trust me. Double rinse.

Life saver

STEP 4 - DRY BOTTLES ON BOTTLE DRAINER TREE - This is the best $20 a homebrew bottler can spend.  Let the bottles dry overnight (or as long as you want really) to make sure the insides are completely dry.  The nice thing about this model is that it has a handle on top so once you load it up you can easily carry it to another out of the way room.  Once the bottles are dry, I pack them back up in their original boxes until bottling day.  However, if you're not going to need the bottle drainer tree again you could just store the bottles right on the tree.  The only minor glitch here is that this tree holds 45 and you want 48-50 so I just dry the remainder upside down on some paper towel.  (If you don't have a bottle tree yet, you can dry all your bottles upside down on paper towel.)


I will post a follow up next week with our bottling day process after we bottle our next brew.

Todd