Keg to bottle question
 

My friend bottles wine and beer with a nice expensive machine ill never own. Instead of bottling myself he will do them for me. But here's the catch. All my brew is kegged. His system uses a pump. If he pumps the beer to his bottling machine. Do you think that will mess with the carbonation levels.

Why don't you get or make a counter pressure filler. They are designed for exactly that purpose. A blickman beer gun costs $125 and you could make one for cheaper than that.

I've got a beer gun and 4,000 bottles. I also have around 25 kegs. I don't want to bottle. I'm tired of it.

4,000 bottles.. how much space i you house does all of that take?

They are on 48x60 pallets and they are 4 foot tall. They weigh 1200 lbs each.

Either you have a brew pub or you have lots and lots of friends!

Getting back to the original question. I don't know for sure but I've been thinking about it. It would seem to me the pump would cause a certain amount of agitation that would alter the amount of co2 in the beer. After thinking about it even more I want to ask the question, "how do big breweries do it?" I know they have a bottling line but I would imagine somewhere is a pump or two pumping beer from point A to point B. That being said, I would think it should be okay to use a pump. I would think you would need to increase the vol of co2 in the beer to account for some loss of co2 though. I guess I would run a test batch with your friends equipment to see how it affected your final product.

Like I said, I'm not sure what the answer is but hopefully my train of thought can help you further in finding the correct answer. Let me know how it turns out.

That does make a lot of sense thanks. It's gonna be trial and error.

We are hoping to open a brew pub in the next 1-2 years. Breweries in Texas can't self distribute yet. We'll see in the next legislative session if they pass a bill that's failed every year for 5 years. And you'd be amazed how many friends you have when you have that much beer and 10 different styles on tap at any given time.

Do you want to be friends? J/K... no really!