Sunday, April 20, 2008

Does most of your homebrew get kegged or bottled?

90% or more Kegged - 47 (36%)

90% or more Bottled - 72 (55%)

Somewhere in between - 11 (8%)

Looks like most people are in the mostly bottling camp with me. I bottle everything, some day I'm sure I'll get a kegging setup, but I like the flexibility of bottling enough that I will always bottle many of my beers.

Things I like about bottling: Allows me to have a huge variety on beers on hand, it's cheap and simple, they are easy to transport, and it is easy to do small quantities for split batches.

Things I hate about bottling: Cleaning bottles, filling bottles, and the occasional problems that come from carbonating high alcohol beers.

Here are some pictures from a night last week taking the labels off about 5 cases of commercial bottles. I soaked the bottles in hot water and generic OxiClean for about an hour, then scraped off the labels with a knife, and took off the glue with a Brillo pad.


4 comments:

Josh said...

NEW SURVEY. WHAT COLOR BOTTLES DO YOU PREFER?

Also wow @ grain sack. Although with grain prices being what they are, you're sitting on a gold mine, Trebeck. A gold mine.

The Mad Fermentationist (Mike) said...

Do you prefer something besides brown? I’ll admit it doesn’t look quite as cool, but light protection is the most important thing to me.

I actually just bought that sack, a bit less than $1 a pound locally, not bad for Maris Otter. It is hard to see, but I store my bulk grain in those clear bins behind the Better Bottle, keeps them fresh for months. I use a Food Saver to keep my partial bags of specialty grains fresh indefinitely.

Anonymous said...

New poll of interest (at least to me). "What size bottle do you use?" My new homebrew friends ask me why I like bombers only and I say it is half the work (I don't keg). Curious what size bottles everyone strives to use and why.

The Mad Fermentationist (Mike) said...

I'll put that on the list for a future poll. I tend to use a mix, although for lower gravity beers I tend to use more bombers and for higher gravity beers I use more 12 oz bottles.