Bottling 500 bottles from kegs

bluetokamak · 01-08-2012, 11:02 PM

My brewpartner and I are looking to bottle about 45 gallons which are currently sitting in carboys. It'd be great to get rid of sediment, so we have been looking into force carbing in a keg, then bottling from there.

Given the quantity of bottles, what would be the fastest way? I've seen the beer guns, but it seems like they take about 10 seconds per bottle, vs. a 1/2" bottle filler which takes about 4 seconds.

I realize that just kegging and serving from the tap would be a great deal less work, but we want to be able to give them away and take with us easily, and neither of us really have the space for a fridge.

Thanks for any advice.

Weizenwerks · 01-08-2012, 11:05 PM

Just leave the keg carbed and cooled, then fill growlers to take with you or give away.

day_trippr · 01-09-2012, 12:37 AM

If you could fill bottles with a Beer Gun at a 15 second cycle, and your buddy could keep up staging the next bottle and capping and casing the filled one, you'd actually fill all the bottles in a bit over two hours.

And it would be epic.

But remember: No pics, didn't happen...

Cheers!

LarsonLE · 01-09-2012, 03:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by day_trippr

If you could fill bottles with a Beer Gun at a 15 second cycle, and your buddy could keep up staging the next bottle and capping and casing the filled one, you'd actually fill all the bottles in a bit over two hours.

And it would be epic.

But remember: No pics, didn't happen...

Cheers!

+1. do it, do it.

bluetokamak · 01-09-2012, 09:55 PM

What kind of attachments would I need from a sanke keg for the blichmann?

I'd do growlers but they are expensive, and I want to fill everything up at once.

Can you crank up the pressure on the blichmann to fill faster or will that cause foaming?

Thanks for the help guys. I'll try and get some pictures up once we decide what to do, trying to convince my friend to go for the kegerator/blichmann but we're both pretty strapped on funds.

**Spartan1979** · 01-10-2012, 01:55 AM

I've filled bombers with 10 psi with minimal foaming.

**Yooper** · 01-10-2012, 02:03 AM

But I don't think it would be very easy at all to use the Beergun at room temperature. Maybe my physics knowledge is lacking, but most room temperature beers will be at 30 psi just to maintain carbonation. Trying to use a Beergun at half pressure would be 15 psi. Even with 10 foot long lines, that would be foam city. I don't think the Beergun or any CP bottle filler was designed to work with warm beer at room temperature!

day_trippr · 01-10-2012, 02:25 AM

Pretty sure any beer still sitting in carboys is going to be minimally carbonated. From the OP's post I assumed the new beer would be mixed with primer in the keg then beer-gunned into bottles. If true I bet the beer line could be pretty short so the rate of flow could be much higher than normal...

Cheers!

**TomSD** · 01-10-2012, 02:31 AM

Put the bottles in the freezer, drop the PSI as low as possible and vent the keg before you start and fill them as close to the top as possible then cap on foam.

You are saying you don't have the space for a fridge though which means you would be trying to carb at room temp? It would make more sense to me to just use a bottle bucket, prime then bottle condition if that were the case. I know getting rid of the sediment sounds like a good plan but I don't think you'll have very much luck doing it all at room temp.

lotbfan · 01-11-2012, 04:59 AM

I read it as the OP wants to carb it in the keg, and then move the carbed beer to bottles. If you tried to do this with a standard bottle filler it would create for a pretty nasty foam fest. You need the counter pressure portion of the counter pressure filler to get all that co2 into the bottles and sealed successfully.

If you regularly work with volumes like this, you might want to get a couple of 20 gallon fermentation buckets (40 bucks each), rack 3 batches into each (or 4 if you like to live on the wild side), and then bottle from there using priming sugar. In the long run, this would be cheaper than buying a kegging system and 3 sankes if you don't already possess them, and you can use your 1/2" filler to boot!