Fugglupagus wrote:This pic makes my back cramp up:
Bottling sucks. But if you can find a way to fill bottles somewhere other than the floor, it sucks slightly less. Some folks put their bottling bucket on the counter, place their butts in a chair, and then fill bottles on something higher than the floor, like an open dishwasher door. I prefer to bottle on my counter:
It wasn't too bad. What I'd like to do is get another lid with airlock hole drilled and make both buckets fermenters, then buy a bucket with the valve on the bottom like yours as the priming bucket. Then Get a shorter piece of tubing to put the bottling wand on that. Then I can let that hang down off the counter and just lift the bottles up to fill them from sitting in a chair. I don't mind the auto-siphon but a valve and bottle wand would be easier to use I think.
Now that I did it once I can see areas I can improve on efficiency. One thing I wish I had was someone to at least take the filled bottles and set a cap on them. I could have put the bucket on top of something to raise the working height, but didn't have anything around that was stabil enough.
I took notes throughout this whole experience and am crafting a list of changes to equipment and process that will help me with future brews. Drives my wife crazy sometimes the amount of depth and detail I go into but me having Asperger's Syndrome, she knows there's nothing I can do about it.