best way to bottle?

i use newspapers on the floor, a towel on top of a plastic cooler, and a short piece of hose that reaches to the bottom of the bottle from my bottling bucket valve.

There is no least messiest way. It's just a lot of work.

Siphon it back into your primary vat, and be careful how you position the tube. Don't put all the way to the bottom of your secondary vat. Make sure it's an inch or 2 above the bottom. That way, you won't be getting the spent sugar on the bottom of the vat. Take 1/4 cup of corn sugar for every gallon of beer you've got and simmer it with a couple of cups of beer. Cool it and pour it into the primary vat.

Naturally, do this AFTER you've sterilized the bottles. The best way to sterilize bottles is to wash them inside and out with a mild bleach solution. Rinse several times with plain water. To make sure that you've got all the bleach out of the bottles, make up a solution of sodium metabisulphite and water. Rinse the bottles once again using this solution. The SodMetPht neutralizes the bleach, which will make your beer taste NASTY if you don't get it all out. Now rinse the bottles a couple more times in plain water. You could also do the caps during this process, but I've never bothered with it.

OK. You've got sterile bottles and caps, and you've primed the beer with 1/4 cup sugar per gallon. Now bottle. I'd come over to help you, but I've got to rotate the shoes on the shoe tree. Good luck.

I have pretty much stopped bottling since I have a kegging system, but recently I have been bottling a six pack of each batch and have come up with a pretty cool set up. First you would need the following

one of thesehttp://morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=16657. you will also need an aquarium pump with tubing or CO2 tank with regulator. and also a hand held cobra tap and a small ring clamp and optional small in line he-pa filter. First slide your racking cane through the middle larger opening of the cap, then attach the cobra tap to the end of the racking cane hose using the clamp. then push the racking cane to the bottom of the carboy gently as to not stir things up. Then using the other tube attach the aquarium pump and air filter plug it in and now you have a kind of very low pressure dispensing setup. Hope this makes sense I have never spilled a single drop and the risk of infection is almost impossible. You can also use this type of setup to rack, and create a completely closed fermentation

I go straight from fermenter to bottles using a water pump designed for fish tanks(bought new and sanitized before each use). I use a simple bottle capper and caps bought at my local hobby store. Before that I used a siphon that I bought from the auto parts store. 1 tablespoon of priming sugar goes in each liter bottle for carbonation and that's about it. Little mess involved.