Another first timer question!

Mister Burns

How far in advance of bottling can you sterilise your bottles? ie can they be sterilised a day or two before and just used on the day or do they need to be done on the day just before bottling?

Thanks again for the help

BeerNut

Depends. In general I wouldn't expect anything sanitised to stay sanitary for more than an hour. Probably being paranoid, but at the same I've never had an infection :cool:

I have heard of people sanitising bottles and then just putting a bit of cling film over the top. They can be stored for weeks that way, apparently, and the beer just poured straight in.

Mister Burns

Thanks BeerNut - will go with doing it on the day so. I thought I was prepared at the beginning but once I started into getting it all going I was all over the place so thought for the bottling if I could have that done in advance I wouldn't be so flustered but I guess if I give myself ample time on the day it should all go fine. Actually how long does it take on bottling day from start to finish?

BeerNut

Depends on method and batch size. This is more-or-less how I do it, and it's maybe three hours including set-up before and cleaning after. I have an 80L trug that allows me to dunk an entire batch worth's of bottles in one go.

At homebrew classes we bottle from a tap on the fermenter using carbonation drops and that's no more than about half an hour's work.

im invisible

i might throw this here instead of starting a new thread

just getting set up to start our first brew here, and wondering where to put the barrel, while its brewing.
we've got a Coopers kit, with a 25L barrel, thinking of seting it up in an old fridge in a shed, with a bulb inside it to keep the temp up,

would that work? im thinking i'd need a low wattage bulb, the fridge would be insulation enough. does it generate much heat itself while fermenting?

Tube

You really should have started a new thread!

Temperatures indoors at the moment are just about right for clean fermentation.

Don't use a bulb/fridge without a temperature controller, like here.

im invisible

nice setup, should keep you going for a while!