1. It's much harder mentally to bottle a full 23l batch than a half batch. I would rather bottle 3 of my half sized batches than one of my full ones. The small batches give you a more manageable number of bottles to clean and sterilise, you're done before you hit the wall and it still feels like an achievement.
2. Bottling solo is a recipe for frustration. I love to get others involved when I'm brewing or bottling, whether it's Bron or some other friends. Good company makes most things bearable and if you get a good process going, you can easily have a batch bottled and ready to go in 20 minutes.
3. Bottle and brew on the same day. It keeps bottling connected with a more fun part of the process. There's also so much dead time when you brew that it's worth making the most of the time and bottle an earlier batch. I find it helpful to keep the flow going. If I don't have another brew going before I start drinking the previous batch, I'm likely to lose momentum and take longer to brew again.
4. Do something special with it. Make up a label, seal bottles with wax, use corks and cages or something like that. Perversely, making more work for yourself can actually make it easier to face if you add some fun and make it look really good.
5. Make it as easy for yourself as possible. You need to develop a process that suits your space and needs. My house doesn't have much space to accomodate my brewing activities and the bottling process can cover parts of the kitchen, bathroom and dining table. Bottling always goes best when I establish a good workflow and I've bought a good, no rinse steriliser to make my life easier.
6. Get yourself a taste of the rewards of bottling. Drink a home brewed beer while you're bottling. This is a good rule for any home brew related activity but it applies particularly to the burdensome tasks. Since there's a lag between bottling and tasting, tasting a previously bottled batch can give you the inspiration you need to get this lot into bottles.
7. A small amount of up front effort saves you down the track. Make sure you rinse and clean your bottles when you drink the beer. It makes the cleaning/sterilising step of bottling much less painful. If people give me bottles that have mould growing in the bottom, they get chucked. Cleaning mould out of bottles is the worst so it's worth the small amount of effort it takes to rinse them.
8. Give yourself enough time. A sure way to make the whole thing frustrating is by trying to squeeze it in when you don't really have time for it.
EDIT: I thought of another one this evening
9. When you're doing the work of 'collecting' bottles, leave the labels on. There's something fun in using a bottle and remembering the beer it contained, the taste, the company you drank it in, all that stuff. The bottles are gaining history and when you sanitise and fill it, that history makes the bottling more pleasant and holds out the promise of more drinks with friends.
I'd like to get a keg system set up one day, but I'll always have beers to bottle and it's worth enjoying the quiet pleasures of bottling.
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