Tips for decanting bottles into a keg?

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Mr. No-Tip

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I am wondering what considerations I should make when decanting some bottles into a keg.

Why do that, you ask?

I made a big 10% IIPA last year that never really carbonated in the bottle as the yeast had really done their thing by that point. The beer itself was pretty decent and picked up a gold at the ACT when I force carbed a PET, so I have some desire to recover the remaining seven or so litres that I have in stubbies.

The hop aroma was well on the way out late last year and must be nearly gone now, so I am also using this as an opportunity to test my hop rocket as a randal and see if it can save the beer from an aroma perspective.

I am going to decant these bottles into my 9l party keg this week, and wondering if anyone had any techniques that could make this a smoother process:

  • I am thinking the beers should be super cold to help them retain what carbonation might have happened since October?
  • Should I add a camden tablet to the keg to help stifle any oxygen pickup, or might that introduce a salty flavour given the low volume?
  • Anything else worth doing?
Thanks brewers!
 
I'd be getting the bottles super cold, and even the keg cold. Then I would put some CO2 in the keg and let it settle to ensure the CO2 drops to the bottom. Open the keg and gently pour the beer down the side of the keg. Finally since you don;t know the resulting carb level left in the beer I would just leave it at serving pressure for a few days to equalise.

QldKev
 
QldKev said:
I'd be getting the bottles super cold, and even the keg cold. Then I would put some CO2 in the keg and let it settle to ensure the CO2 drops to the bottom. Open the keg and gently pour the beer down the side of the keg. Finally since you don;t know the resulting carb level left in the beer I would just leave it at serving pressure for a few days to equalise.

QldKev
I've been wondering about this** ... and it might be a bit of a myth:

www.caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/v71/cave-71-01-100.pdf


** eg. in relation to purging O2 from the head space of a keg of beer
with a single blast of CO2 - thinking that it actually takes several blasts
and purges with CO2 to bring down the proportion of CO2 in the keg.
 
Thanks for the input. I went ahead with it tonight.

I took a swig and it wasn't actually that bad. It had carbonated a bit over the months but the hop character was pretty well gone.

Of course, Murphy always visits my brewing projects. The cascade flowers I had in the vac sealed bag didn't actually smell that great...beers poured pretty well, but the sediment was surprisingly quite looseat the bottom - maybe a symptom of the fact that it went in their dead, rather than doing its carbonating work? Maybe not. I ended up losing about 500ml to crud that I didn't want in the keg. Not a big deal on a 20l batch, but when you're down to jsut a few L...

Tasting tomorrow! Fingers crossed on the recovery DIPA.
 
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