Counter Pressure Bottling

[kabooby]

After listening to a few podcasts on the Jamil show I have been inspired to keg all of my beers and counter pressure fill bottles as apposed to adding priming sugar. If its good enough for JZ than its good enough for me

In the past its only big beers that I want to keep for a long time that I bottle. These beers have kept well and they were all primed with dextrose. My main concern is that if the beer is counter pressure filled that it will not age as well.

I was going to use a design similar to Thirsty Boy's here .

Who here has done it? how did you do it? and how did the beers keep after time? (say around 12 months)

Kabooby

 

[Thirsty Boy]

If you do use a design like mine - then the tube that connects teh picnic tap and fitting on the "gas" side - wore loose after not too many uses and popped off inconveniently one time when i was filling a wheatie at highish pressure (messy) - I have since replaced it with an inch or two of 10mm OD Beva beer/gas line. It jams nice and tight into both the picnic tap and the black fitting and doesn't leak or pop off (yet)

A strategically placed hose clamp saw to a small but annoying leak out the top of the big rubber bung - you could fix it by custom drilling a bung with a slightly smaller hole, but mine was straight from the LHBS and was just a fraction loose.

The whole thing leaks just a little on the gas side, but thats OK - the more that leaks out the less you have to release on purpose to make the beer flow. With mine, if you are very patient, you can just wait for enough gas to escape so that the bottle fills without you doing anything. I'm not that patient. If I wanted to I could stop the leaks with a bit more teflon tape - but nah.

I have 14month Old Ale that is still in good shape. Not enough experience with smaller beers to give you an answer, sorry. But 6months is no problem at least. I give each bottle a "blast" of C02 then purge (pressurize and release) the bottles at least 4 times before I put the final burst in - then fill.

Cheers

TB

 

[kabooby]

Thanks TB,

I got some hits on Brewboard with people saying they are getting good results out of the Bilchmann beer gun

might give that a go

kabooby

 

[Thirsty Boy]

That thing just looks easy. CP filling works just fine, but easy it isn't.

Reports on the beer gun thing if you give it a go please - I like the look of it