Counter Pressure Filler Which One

[Carboy]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to purchase a counter pressure filler, but I'm torn between a standard filler from Craftbrewer, or the Blichman Beer Gun.

Anyone have any advice/experience as to which is the best and why?

Thank you in advance for any replies.

Cheers
Carboy :icon_cheers:

 

[goatherder]

Neither. I built one a while back and used it once. Nice bit of gear but a pain to clean & muck about fiddling with beer lines & such.

To bottle a couple of beers from the keg, get yourself a picnic tap. Chill your bottles down then slowly run the beer into the bottles with the picnic tap, using very low gas pressure. Whack a cap on and you've got beer to go. The carbonation loss is minimal.

If you want to bottle a lot of beers, bottle the traditional way with priming sugar. Quicker, cleaner and less mucking about.

 

[haysie]

I bought the Craftbeer(Morebeer) model and love it. Talk about needing 6 hands and the usual "I havent got one BUT there shit" is bollucks.
Best little baby in my haus, if you know how to turn a ball valve the right way, nothing can go wrong. Also the beer is infinity better kegged filled than bottle conditioned.

edit. craftbrewer

 

[kevin_smevin]

It all depends what you want to use it for. If you just want to bottle the odd beer to take to a mates house and drink straight away, i wouldn't bother with anything fancy. If you want to bottle beer to last a while then thats another matter

I've got the blichmann beer gun and i'm really happy with it. It is super easy to use, only one hand needed. Its not actually a counter pressure filler, though foaming is minimal if you do everything right. I bought it because i like the idea of being able to purge my bottle with CO2 prior to filling. This does make a difference to the freshness of your bottled beer and how long it will keep. You can use it to bottle both carbonated and un-carbonated beer, so you can still bottle condition if you want, but it will eliminate oxidation of your beer.

 

[Bribie G]

I bought the Craftbeer(Morebeer) model and love it. Talk about needing 6 hands and the usual "I havent got one BUT there shit" is bollucks.
Best little baby in my haus, if you know how to turn a ball valve the right way, nothing can go wrong. Also the beer is infinity better kegged filled than bottle conditioned.

edit. craftbrewer

Not quite on topic but:

I agree with the bottle conditioned thang. I use the CPBF for competition beers and for taking beers places and giving them to some of my fan club at work / family etc.
So it's not a question of standing there and bottling off 30 beers, probably three or four out of each brew at the most. Now I do 23L batches and this yields a keg plus 4 bottles, day in day out.
I keep the 4 for an archive, but find that they very rapidly part company with the kegged version as they grow yeast during secondary fermentation in the bottle, as well as (maybe) effects from being stored warm.

Perfect example the other day, I have an Irish Red in keg which I will put in the QLD comps. I drank the keg half down then took off the beer disconnect to quarantine it for a couple of weeks to draw off some bottles for the comp, and because I like the beer I put the 4 bottle conditioned ones in the fridge for a quaff if required. Totally different beer - you know what, it tasted like home brew :unsure:

Definitely recommend a CPBF