Anyone Tried Bottling Keg Beer?

[METALLICA]

hi,has anyone tried bottling keg beer? i tried to give it a go but all it did is bubble up and i think that all i did is lose most of the carbonisation and waste good beer. hoping someone has a better idea i can use at home,thanks :huh: :huh:

 

[barls]

try searching for counter pressure filling or beer guns

 

[goatherder]

Turn your gas pressure right down so the beer just trickles in. It won't foam up nearly as much. You will lose a little gas during the process so it helps to have the beer carbonated a little higher than normal. Having the beer and the bottles really cold helps too.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Robert,

there are a few ways to do it..

First, you can either pay for or build yourself a dedicated bottle filler. I have used a Counter Pressure bottle filler with a fair amount of success, A company call Blichmann makes a slightly different type of bottle filler called the Beer Gun. Both of these methods are intended to not only get beer into the bottle with a minimum of foaming, but also to purge out oxygen to prevent the beer from staling prematurely.

If you want to bottle for the "long term" from your keg, then you should probably make or build something like those things. If you do a search on this site, you will find a number of references and even instructions on how to build them.

If its more "short term" you are looking for, a few days, a couple of weeks... then there are other ways. I will try to give you a couple of the methods I have used/ heard of. You can try one or more of them in combination.. Its gonna take a few goes to get it working well.

First... get your keg a little bit more carbonated than you actually want to have the beer. That way if you lose some gas, you are back to the right level rather than flat.

Everything, beer, lines, tap/gun, and especially the bottles... as cold as you can get them. Dont "freeze" the bottles though, any ice that forms on the inside can make the beer foam up.

Just before you want to fill your bottles... release most of the pressure from your keg, just have a few PSI in there to push the beer through nice and gently. Take it slowly.

If you are using a pluto gun, run it gently down the side of the (very cold) bottle, just like pouring a beer into a pot.

Better yet, if you can rig something up so that there is a tube running to the bottom of the bottle, and you fill from the bottom (just like bottling out of the fermentor with a little bottler doovalacky)

You can more or less do the same from a normal tap.. but its a little harder thats all.

I bought a plastic "cobra" tap and made up a beer line for it, nice and long, and have shoved a piece of tubing into the tap as a bottling wand. That worked pretty well.

You should be able to get a pretty good result out of that lot.

Have fun, it will probably take you a couple of tries to work out the method that does the job for you. But its definitely possible.

Cheers

Thirsty


Edit: sorry for repeating advice... I type too slowly for the length of post I usually write ... sigh

 

[dr K]

The big killer here is oxygen.
But if you only want to whack some in a couple of pet bottles to take to a barby or whatever here is a method that I have employed with some success for a number of years.
Get hold of a drilled rubber stopper that will accommodate beer line in a tight fit, if its a bit loose some creative tread tape work works wonders!
Stick enough line through to get close to the bottom of your average PET bottle and put a liquid disconnect on the other end.
As Goatherder says chill your beer right down. -0.5C is fine, this ensures maximum dissolution of the CO2 you have in there. Chill the container, if its PET freeze it!
Drop the head pressure in your keg way down and jam the stopper in the bottle, connect the disconnect.
Slowly increase the gas until the beer slowly trickles into the bottle, soon it will stop, so ever so carefully (like a champagne cork) let some gas out of the bottle by releasing the stopper, jam it back it in etc until your bottle is just about full..do not try and fill it, grab another one, cut the gas pull the disconnect and carefully rlease the stoper, screw top immediately. Chill again.
It is or may be messy but its cheap and fine for a day or so.
For longer periods you really need to invest in a CPF or such but even these are not going to eliminate all the oxygen, so its just a waiting period.
The Q and D is fine for that day though..PM me if you wish and I will take some photos of my primitive set up.

K

 

[METALLICA]

try searching for counter pressure filling or beer guns

thanks for your help,i will look into it

 

[METALLICA]

Robert,

there are a few ways to do it..

First, you can either pay for or build yourself a dedicated bottle filler. I have used a Counter Pressure bottle filler with a fair amount of success, A company call Blichmann makes a slightly different type of bottle filler called the Beer Gun. Both of these methods are intended to not only get beer into the bottle with a minimum of foaming, but also to purge out oxygen to prevent the beer from staling prematurely.

If you want to bottle for the "long term" from your keg, then you should probably make or build something like those things. If you do a search on this site, you will find a number of references and even instructions on how to build them.

If its more "short term" you are looking for, a few days, a couple of weeks... then there are other ways. I will try to give you a couple of the methods I have used/ heard of. You can try one or more of them in combination.. Its gonna take a few goes to get it working well.

First... get your keg a little bit more carbonated than you actually want to have the beer. That way if you lose some gas, you are back to the right level rather than flat.

Everything, beer, lines, tap/gun, and especially the bottles... as cold as you can get them. Dont "freeze" the bottles though, any ice that forms on the inside can make the beer foam up.

Just before you want to fill your bottles... release most of the pressure from your keg, just have a few PSI in there to push the beer through nice and gently. Take it slowly.

If you are using a pluto gun, run it gently down the side of the (very cold) bottle, just like pouring a beer into a pot.

Better yet, if you can rig something up so that there is a tube running to the bottom of the bottle, and you fill from the bottom (just like bottling out of the fermentor with a little bottler doovalacky)

You can more or less do the same from a normal tap.. but its a little harder thats all.

I bought a plastic "cobra" tap and made up a beer line for it, nice and long, and have shoved a piece of tubing into the tap as a bottling wand. That worked pretty well.

You should be able to get a pretty good result out of that lot.

Have fun, it will probably take you a couple of tries to work out the method that does the job for you. But its definitely possible.

Cheers

Thirsty
Edit: sorry for repeating advice... I type too slowly for the length of post I usually write ... sigh

thanks for all your methods,and help

 

[METALLICA]

try searching for counter pressure filling or beer guns

thanks for your help,i will look into it

 

[METALLICA]

The big killer here is oxygen.
But if you only want to whack some in a couple of pet bottles to take to a barby or whatever here is a method that I have employed with some success for a number of years.
Get hold of a drilled rubber stopper that will accommodate beer line in a tight fit, if its a bit loose some creative tread tape work works wonders!
Stick enough line through to get close to the bottom of your average PET bottle and put a liquid disconnect on the other end.
As Goatherder says chill your beer right down. -0.5C is fine, this ensures maximum dissolution of the CO2 you have in there. Chill the container, if its PET freeze it!
Drop the head pressure in your keg way down and jam the stopper in the bottle, connect the disconnect.
Slowly increase the gas until the beer slowly trickles into the bottle, soon it will stop, so ever so carefully (like a champagne cork) let some gas out of the bottle by releasing the stopper, jam it back it in etc until your bottle is just about full..do not try and fill it, grab another one, cut the gas pull the disconnect and carefully rlease the stoper, screw top immediately. Chill again.
It is or may be messy but its cheap and fine for a day or so.
For longer periods you really need to invest in a CPF or such but even these are not going to eliminate all the oxygen, so its just a waiting period.
The Q and D is fine for that day though..PM me if you wish and I will take some photos of my primitive set up.

K

hi,thanks for your metod,a couple of them photos would be a great help so i can understand the basic science.

 

[pint of lager]

I follow Dr K's method, but slightly modified.

Buy a liquid disconnect, a metre of line and hook the line onto the disconnect.

Use PET bottles.

Sanitise the disconnect and tubing.

Remove all head pressure from the keg.

Hook up the disconnect to the keg, place other end right to the bottom of the PET bottle.

Very slowly bring the gas pressure up, till the beer is gently filling the bottle. When the bottle is full, turn off the gas.

Put lid on PET and as you are tightening the lid, squeeze all the head space out of the PET. Drink soon.

Have never tried any longer term storage using this method.

The great thing about the liquid disconnect with a piece of tubing is that you can use it to push sanitiser out of cleaned kegs. Was using it yestedray and transferred the sanitiser into the next cleaned keg that needed sanitising.

 

[Henno]

If oxygen is the enemy in this case couldn't you fill your bottles with co2 from your bottle first? I thought as it is heavy it would sit on the bottom and if you put the gas in slowly all the normal air would purge out the top and then you could fill it with beer from the bottom using the above methods.

 

[pint of lager]

CO2 is a heavier molecule than oxygen or nitrogen, but we are talking about a gas and it doesn't form layers. If you could see the molecules of gas in an empty bottle filled with air, you would see very small objects whizzing around really fast bouncing off the walls. Very rarely do they collide with another molecule in the air. Most of the space would have no molecules in it.

In an actively working fermenter, there is so much CO2 being produced that the head space is flushed of oxygen by the CO2.

Once the lid is open, gas molecules are moving very quickly and will dissapate out the opening.

If you want to fill a bottle with CO2, you will need a flying lead off your gas cylinder and a bucket of sanitiser. Fill the bottle up with sanitiser, invert it in the bucket, put the flying lead in the bottle and allow gas to fill the bottle. Screw on lid. Then you can use Dr K's el cheapo bottle filler and know that your beer will be safer for long term storage. But it is a lot of stuffing around. Perfect if you want to enter a bottle in a show, the cutoff date is two weeks before judging.