BeerBorg

1 cup of water per 2.5 gallons, dissolve sugar, boil 2 mins. Then COOL by putting covered pot in ice bath or let sit off hot burner while prepping bottles.

Use hose from spigot into bottling bucket. Do not aerate the beer. Gentle stir after every 8 bottles or so.

When I bottled, I didn't bother cooling the sugar water. I figured the amount of hit sugar water was overwhelmed by the beer. I never had a problem with carbonation.

bpgreen wrote:When I bottled, I didn't bother cooling the sugar water. I figured the amount of hit sugar water was overwhelmed by the beer. I never had a problem with carbonation.

Yep, so long as whatever you are using for a bottling bucket can handle it.

The_Professor wrote:

bpgreen wrote:When I bottled, I didn't bother cooling the sugar water. I figured the amount of hit sugar water was overwhelmed by the beer. I never had a problem with carbonation.

Yep, so long as whatever you are using for a bottling bucket can handle it.

Good point.

When I was using the LBKs for batch priming I wouldn't cool the sugar water either, just pour it in after about half of my beer was racked in. The cooler beer handled the temp and I didn't have to worry about the boiling hot sugar water warping the plastic.

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batch priming is a beautiful thing. at least you know everything is going to be over/under/perfectly carbed the same way! for the "bottling bucket" I would suggest the following options if you are looking to be frugal about it:
1) get a mr beer kit (or at least the little brown keg by itself) from craigslist. in my area you can get a brand new keg with a refill recipe can for $20 routinely. or you can get one for $10 from mr beer website, but shipping is like $8, so unless you wanted to load up on stuff to make shipping worth it...check CL first!
2) ***POTENTIALLY BEST OPTION*** or you could CHECK THIS LINK OUT ON AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Beer-Premium- ... W5VGY?th=1
I feel like it is a price mistake, so act quickly. for $32.89 (nice weird price!) you get the MB keg, bottling kit, and the amber ale recipe. there are a bunch of other recipes there, but this one came in at that price (others are north of $45)

so check it out. and if you want to skip the "bottling bucket" aspect, you can always do a simple fill from the spigot and now you have a 2nd fermentor
and I specifically did not include another demon, simply because the MB setup is a lot cheaper, especially if you did, in fact, want to use it solely for bottling.

In one of my previous replies, I didn't push the bottling bucket aspect because you can still have good carbed beer by bottle priming and easy when you first start out, but batch priming is the way to go and it looks like you are already ahead of the game on doing your research so all the advice above ^^ is right on.

You guys are great! Thanks for the help. So I used a hose to get the wort from the fermenter to the bottling bucket. I then used the spigot on the bottling bucket to get the beer into the plastic quart bottles. Should I have also used the hose from the bottling bucket to the bottles? Also, should I have had the lid on the bottling bucket on at any point?

you didn't use the lid?!?!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

you may as well ship all the bottles to me for proper disposal and start over from scratch.

but seriously, you don't NEED the hose (or a true bottle wand), but they do cut down on agitation once the beer splashes into the bottles. in my experience, didn't matter...but I do enjoy the ease of use the $3 mister beer wand affords me.

and in the future, keep the lid on for piece of mind, but there is a 99% chance that you will have had zero contaminants enter your beer in the brief time is was "exposed"...so you should be a ok here. now keep those bottles nice and cozy between 70-80 degrees for 2 weeks and you will be golden

here is what I am talking about. most beer supply places have them for $3 or $4, but amazon has it for $5 but that includes the shipping
https://www.amazon.com/Spring-Loaded-Be ... B000E66A4U

I did use a hose and a beer wand. I don't see how I could have used the lid because the only hole it it is a tine hole with a rubber thing around it (I presume for air) but the wand wouldn't fit into it???? So, I guess I don't understand how to use the lid...

He's talking about just keeping the lid on the bucket to keep anything from falling into it. While racking the beer into it, you would just cover as much of the top as possible while having the hose feeding into the bucket - not through that hole, which is for an airlock.
One of the members here has wild yeast in his house that would jump at the chance for an open bucket to get to his wort - - but most people are ok.

Thanks for the clarification!

thanks @Kealia that is exactly what I meant! I used to put saran wrap over the bucket opening and around the siphon...but realized I was over-thinking this a bit haha but I'll now keep the lid resting there for the bulk of transferring, and then get it out of the way when I need to tilt the bucket to get that last bit 'o beer out