Beer Forum

After winning a couple of medals I have the competition bug now and was wondering what is the best way to take kegged beer and get it into a bottles for competition. I have a couple of beers sitting in kegs that I would like to bottle 4 to 8 bottles each for a couple of competitions in Sept. Right now I will fill growlers up using a 4 foot house open on one end and the other connected to a line out connector on the keg. Guessing that I would loose a lot of carbonation this way and not sure how long the beer would last being filled that way. Is a true counter flow filler or beer gun my only option and how long will beer lasted if filled this way.

main two things are a counter pressure bottle filler or the beer gun which does the same thing but is a one handed device. I own both and find the beer gun easier. Am still testing my results to see which worked better in the long run

SunkenBier wrote:main two things are a counter pressure bottle filler or the beer gun which does the same thing but is a one handed device. I own both and find the beer gun easier. Am still testing my results to see which worked better in the long run

Are they really the same thing. I thought that the CPF prevents foeaming by pressurizing the bottle and the beergun prevents foraming by slowly decreasing the pressure of the beer as if travels though the beer gun.

I have bottled with the picknic tap before. I would chill the bottles and lower the keg pressure to 0.2-0.3 bar (1-2 psi). Then I can fill the bottles very carefully w/o loosing to much carbonation. But I'm not sure if this method is good enough for competition beer, where you want to hit a desired carbonation level.

Kai

Kaiser wrote:Are they really the same thing. I thought that the CPF prevents foeaming by pressurizing the bottle and the beergun prevents foraming by slowly decreasing the pressure of the beer as if travels though the beer gun.

I have bottled with the picknic tap before. I would chill the bottles and lower the keg pressure to 0.2-0.3 bar (1-2 psi). Then I can fill the bottles very carefully w/o loosing to much carbonation. But I'm not sure if this method is good enough for competition beer, where you want to hit a desired carbonation level.

Kai

I know with the beer gun it has a button that injects the co2 into the bottle before filling which equalizes the pressure. Then you push the second button to inject the beer. I learned the hard way that I need to lower my pressure to about 4 PSI when filling and then everything comes out smoothly. The first time I bottled at my serving PSI of 12 and made a beercano. I thing the stuff shot at least four feet and spayed my face, car and some of the garage. It was funny though.

I would suggest using something to push the CO2 out of the bottle since it is the oxygen that spoils the beer. When the local breweries fill the growlers they say it will spoil in a few days due to Oxygen exposure. Ive never let one sit long enough to test how long it takes to go bad. For judging you want to make the transfer as clean as possible.

Hey Guys,

I worked in the filtration department of a Macro Brewer here in Oz for a while and there was a jigger we used to use that might be helpful.

For taking samples (and we took a LOT of them) everyone used to carry around a "sample tube" which was just a connection to screw into the ball joint of the production line and two bits of plastic tubing.

A small (maybe 3mm) line which was the main length of the tube, and then right on the end, a bit of five or six mm line which let the pressure drop suddenly and stopped the samples from foaming. Like this


The picture is actually fairly close to being actual size. You used to just tinker with the length of larger tube till it poured without foam. We used these things to take samples for everything except micro organism analysis. This includes samples for C02 levels, so the lab people certainly didn't believe that any significatn quantity of carbonation was being lost.

Maybe a setup with some less flexible tube and a picnic tap would give similar results in a bottle. Sounds more or less like what the beer gun is doing. Haven't tried it. Just a thought