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Alistair Miller

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Well I've bought some kit to help with bottling. I have a bottle rinser, bottle drainer and a bottling wand/stick. I was testing the bottling stick just with a bucket of water into a bottle and have been having some problems getting it to work. Is there anything particular I need to do to get it going?

I used a syphon tube I already had and had to put a bit of tape round it as it was narrower than the connection on the bottling stick.
 
If you dunk the end of the syphon tube in hot water for a few mins it may soften so you can stretch it over the end of the bottling wand.

My first efforts with a wand were using a poly tube connected to a tap at the bottom of the FV; a bit of a pfaff. I've found it easir second time around plugging the stick directly into the tap at te bottom of the FV and offering the bottles up to it directly.
 
Gravity is key. Getting bucket or fv higher than bottle's or barrel should improve flow vastly.

Dave
 
I also use a standard syphon tube and a little bottler i join the tap that i got with it to the little bottler tube using the long tapered end and the other end to the flexible syphon tube and it works well.


I cut the larger diameter tube off mine (see arrow in picture below) to make it fit inside the flexible tube using the hot water method mentioned above (before i decided to use the tap method later) but it may not be necessary.



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I brewed a kit many years ago. I used the bottler stick plugged directly into the tap, didn't have any problems except for some drips on the floor
 
Trouble in what respect? If your bottles have a pronounced,domed base then sometimes the pin on the wand slips and won't compress to release the beer. Angle the bottle.Another one is if you have a lid firmly fixed to your bottling bucket,as you drop the beer it creates a vacuum in the bucket and stops the flow. Open the tap... obvious...but I'm as guilty as hell on this one!
 
The different tube sizes involved in brewing has to be my biggest frustration with home-brewing (well, that and having teenage sons drinking all my brews!). It's about time Terissa May forgot Brexit and turned her attention to a standardised home-brewing tube diameter.

Where tubes 'almost' fit, use some Duck Tape or similar to avoid leakage. Also, I find using a wand and a syphon to bottle is a two man job - one at each end - to avoid pulling up yeast or air, or having beer overflowing from the bottles etc.
 
I find that the bottling wands have different flow rates. If you press fully down, the flow rate is really slow. But a softer press and the flow rate increases.
 

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