bottle headroom

KAGY

Simple question- how much headroom do you leave in the bottle? When I take the bottling wand out of a typical flip top the beer the beer recedes down to the base of the neck. I then tip the wand off the inside of the neck to top it up to maybe1cm from the top. But that seems to spray it in - a small oxidation risk?

So what do you leave?

Shiny

I find the wand leaves the perfect amount of head space, any time I have topped it up higher than that the beer didn't carbonate very well.

Ideally the head space would be purged of air with CO2 to reduce the chances of oxidation but not many brewers have the equipment to do that.

BeerNut

The displacement of the wand is the right amount for me. So I fill to the overflow point, take the wand out and close the bottle. It's never as low as the shoulder of the bottle, however. Are you definitely filling the bottles all the way to the top before removing the wand?

Saruman

Don't forget to say expelliarmus!

mayto

I find the bottling wands work fine, just fill the bottle to the top and remove. Any oxygen in the headspace should be consumed if bottle conditioning your beer. If force carbonating then you would want to purge the bottle of oxygen alright with co2.