Flip top bottles? What's the deal with the seal?

Last Monday I had the day off and decided to bottle my Witbier. I was concerned about timing, after all Saturday marked the 1 week mark, and the airlock stopped bubbling right about then. Would waiting a couple of days hurt or harm the beer?

I found this discussion to be very timely and relevant. How long do you let your beer ferment before you bottle? Apparently 2 weeks is the new conventional wisdom, but I suppose it really all depends on final gravity and such... Speaking of gravity, I just want to repeat, I love my thief!

I'm happy to say, this particular batch of beer has gone off without a hitch. By far the easiest brewing and bottling days so far. I just hope the final product is good, time will tell. I'm chomping at the proverbial bit waiting for a taste, but I'll be good and let the beer condition for another week or so before I crack one open. Which leads me to a question...


I've been using these flip top bottle now for a while now. The last 3 batches I've made have all found a home in the flip tops. As far as I'm concerned they beat the crap out of recycled bottles and that accursed two handed caper that came with my brewing equipment. But it's not all cotton candy and walks on the beach with these things. I would say a less than acceptable percentage of my bottles fail to provide a good seal, and some of my beer ends up flat.

One of my buddies tried to make me feel better a few of weeks ago when I opened a couple bottles of my left over Holiday Ale, in hopes of clearing the batch out and moving on with my life, only to find that 2 out of the three I opened were a little flat. He said, "Hey, it's not that bad, its like a cask ale or something..." Not quite, it's just a flat mediocre Holiday Ale...

A friend at work suggested wetting the seals before capping the bottles, but that sounds like an opportunity to introduce something to the bottles that will kill the beer. I don't know, maybe I should say to hell with it and move straight to kegging... But there's something to be said about the portability and portion control offered by bottles.

So, does anyone out there use the flip top bottles? And if so, have you had a problem getting good seals? What did you do to resolve the issue? I could use a little advice, but perhaps I should have asked this before bottling my latest batch... DOH!

Bloggling and Bottling day

Today is a rainy Monday, a perfect day for blogging, and bottling...

I'm fortunate to have today off from work, which gives me time to get my Witbier out of the carboy and into the bottles! I'm pretty psyched, as I got to use my thief today and it proved to be one of the most simple yet useful home brewing tools I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Video - This guy shows how to use the thief, if you can stand the sound of the traffic...

The thief rocks! The best/easiest hydrometer reading I've ever had. The F.G. was exactly where I needed it to be, so all is well. I currently have my bottles cleaning/sanitizing. Once they're ready, I'll get to bottling. In the mean time, some blogging...

I've recently added a few new sites to my Other Beer Bloggers of Note section, located towards the bottom of the site along the right side. If you haven't check out these blogs, you really should. Each one offers a unique perspective on beer and/or home brewing. My most recent additions are highlighted below:

• Adam's Beer Bits 2
• Bad Ben's Brew Blog
• Beer.About.com
• Brainard Brewing
• Fermentarium (NEW)
  
• Fermentedly Challenged (NEW)
• Monday Night Brewery
• Stonch's Beer Blog
• The Beer Geek (A fellow beer traveler)
• The Beer Pirate
• The Frosted Brew: Home Brew Tutorials (NEW)
• Travis' Brew Blog

Also, I've added twitter to my site. Not sure why, I just did, after reading this discussion over at the aleuminati: Twitter (All in a ...)

The verdict is not out yet on how useful, if at all, this will be. Might be a good thing for blogging on road trips or staying in touch with other beer bloggers. Time will tell...

That's it for now, I gotta run some errands while the bottles do their thing... More to follow!

Waiting eagerly to crack open my brew

My most recent attempt at home brewing is nearly complete. The beer has been bottled and has been conditioning in basement for about a week or so now. I should be able to crack one open in next Sunday and see how I did. Although I'm told a few extra weeks of conditioning would make it all the better.

In the mean time I've got to get back to the gym. After a 4 day stint on sick leave, and then a 3 day weekend of none stop work, there hasn't been a great deal of time in the schedule for me to workout, and I've been eating poorly the entire time. We ordered Chinese food last night, That General Tso gets me all the time...

I think I'll take my beer's lead and spend the next week conditioning. In this case I will not be sitting in my dark basement waiting for my taste to improve, but I will be working out and more closely monitoring my diet (beer included) over at my traineo page.

Stay tuned for my brew results and the final installment of my Boston Beer Tour.

28 Bottles of Beer on the Floor? (VIDEOS)

I had today off, in honor of Chris Columbus. Thanks Chris, here's to you... Thanks for the day off!

At any rate, I decided to bottle my batch of English Pale Ale today, holding off a week based on input from a guy over at beertools.com. It's early October and there's no work today, what better New England tradition to following than home brewing?

My wife was a little annoyed, as my bottling activities interfered with her desire to go apple picking, another great New England Fall tradition. Not to worry, I'll make it up to her. I think...

When I set out to sanitize my gear this afternoon, I was a little low on C-Brite, so I went out to CVS and got a bottle of good old fashioned bleach. I gave the new flip cap bottles the wife got me for Christmas a good bleach and water bath in my bottling bucket and my old fermenter bucket. I also gave the rest of my bottling stuff a good cleaning. Let's hope those flip bottles work, last time was a disaster.



She sprung for four 12 packs of those "Grolsch" style bottles, but at the end of the day I only filled a bout 28 bottles. Oh well, that'll work, and hey! I have enough bottles left to brew a second batch!

Here's a tip: An empty dish washer makes for an excellent drying rack, even better if you can run the heated dry cycle on the bottles. You may not want to wash them in there though, I've heard that jet-dry stuff can harm your beer.


As the priming sugar boiled away, I took my final gravity reading and all seemed well, it was close to the 1.012 indicated on the instructions that came with the kit. Perhaps my struggles with the hydrometer were now in the past.


And, maybe I was a little hard on that yeast, maybe it wasn't so lazy after all... Maybe it was over achieving yeast and just finished earlier than expected. but it's not like I ask a lot of my yeast, I just want them to make my wort into beer and then carbonate it, it's the YEAST they can do! (Sorry!)



Unfortunately I made a bit of a mess in the kitchen. I was a little slopping with the bottling cane, and had to do some quick mopping up with some towels.



And to make matters worse, I asked the wife to take a couple of photos of me doing my thing, and she accidentally banged the camera up in the process of taking a photo while handing me some paper towels to clean up my mess. I think the camera is dead, and the wife is none too happy. But life goes on. Here's the last picture that camera will probably ever take... (I should have been a male model...)


After all was said and done, I was able to bottle, clean up, crack a celebratory beer from the fridge, shower, hit the blog and get ready for some early evening quality time with the wife in record time. All is right in the universe.

Stay tuned for the final results on this batch! Inthe mean time, have a beer and relax!