Missing the meetings

the only addition i would add is look and the caps to see how the seat, if the are off get a new batch of caps. i recently had a whole bag of defective caps. i was glad i had only bottled about 12 bottles.

by the way, they are not calling PBW, or One Step soap. they are talking about dish soap. there is not ever a reason to use dish soap that i can see. if your sanitizer is too expensive, get Idophor it is really inexpensive (but don't get it on your wife's carpet)

I agree with Ted. I use the same technique and I've never had many problems. If you siphon on top of it and hold your hose along the side in a manner that it gets it swirling well and get that vortex going it mixes pretty well. I've actually dumped the sugar packet right in the bottom of the bucket before without dissolving it and had success without any stirring. I reccomend dissolving it in some boiled water tho.

When i do bottle I never mix. Did you disolve the dextrose in about a pint of boiling water? I always just poured the boiled solution into the bottling bucket then started siphoning. The slight vortex created seemed to mix it very well.

Just don't stir too fast cause you don't want to introduce oxygen back into it.

I don't remember how much I stirred when I added the dextrose, but it might be that it wasn't stirred enough.
But I know I used soap when I washed the bottles... next time, no soap.

Thanks guys!

Yes! I forgot about the soap!

I have had this problem in the past. Here is what I was doing wrong maybe you did the same thing.

1. I did not let the dextrose and beer mix in my bottleing bucket enough.
2. If you clean your bottles with soap it can mess with your beer too.

It is a possibility that the dextrose didn't get stirred in good enough. So some of the bottles got a good amount & the others got little to none.
Usually you can tell pretty easily if you don't have the caps on right. If the tops of the bottles are chipped at all, DO NOT use them. You won't get a good seal then.
Another possibiity would be if you filled the bottles too full. If they are too full they won't properl carbonate. Just have the bottle filler all the way to the bottom & when the bottle is full, pull it out & that should be the proper space.
What was the temp. of the room where the bottles were aging? Was it too cold? That will also affect carbonation.

Jeff may have some bottles for you at the shop & if not, talk to Jill at the Walrus to have them save you bottles but you MUST pick them up quckly like every other day cause they don't have the room to store them & they have got burned by saving bottles before so I started to earn back their trust by doing as I say.

I'm going to miss this week's meeting, so I thought I'd post a few questions here...

1) The last meeting I was at, someone mentioned they have connections at a bar/restaurant and they could get bottles... Could I get a couple cases of bottles?

2) The last meeting I was at, someone mentioned they had a bottling tree they don't use... who was that and how much do you want for it?

3) I bottled my latest batch 4-6 weeks ago. About 70-80% of them are fairly flat, the rest are great. I bottled with a packaged bag of dextrose. It was whatever Jeff had on the shelf - I'm assuming it was 5-6 oz. - I didn't really pay attention to how much was there. What's going on with the flat bottles? Is the cap not on tight enough or not making a good seal?

--Tyler