This is awesome. I tried it for the first time today and it seemed to work great. Granted this is my first time botteling anything, but it went off without a hitch, and I didn't even neeed to buy anything
Thanks for the great thread and idea BeirMuncher!
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“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Benjamin Franklin
Thanks again BeirMuncher! Filled up the rest of a case last night for my trip this upcoming weekend. Glad that I finally will be able to share my efforts with my friends and family.
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“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Benjamin Franklin
I used this setup yesterday to bottle some cider for SWMBO. Worked like a charm. I was thinking... I could drive a 14G IV cathelon or needle into the stopper, attach some IV tubing with the sliding closure, and regulate the filling speed that way instead of trying to deform the stopper each time.
Updated Filling Technique for Long Term Bottle Storage
One of the enemies of bottled beer is oxygen. It won’t necessarily cause an infection, but even slight oxygenation can impart some off-flavors in a beer.
BJCP Description:
Oxidized - Any one or combination of winy/vinous, cardboard, papery, or sherry-like aromas and flavors.
This is especially true if the beer is a light-medium style like a Blonde, Kolsch…etc. For short term storage (party, tail gate, gift giving), this isn’t generally a problem. However, if you are going to store these beers for any length of time (3-4 weeks or more), it’s worth making every effort to push out as much O2 as possible.
One of the easiest ways to purge oxygen from your bottles using the BMBF is to cap-on-foam. That is, get the bottle to slightly “gush” and cap right on top of the foam. The foam after all is very near 100% CO2. Getting your bottles to foam consistently is a bit tricky so I thought I’d share my technique. (This technique is also used by our local micro brewery that fills their 22-Oz bombers by hand.)
Here’s my process for getting the bottle to foam, without loosing too much CO2 or beer.
1) Fill your bottles normally. Follow Bobby’s technique for removing the cane and squeezing in a bit more to get a slightly higher fill. (Don’t go too high if you’re planning on entering this into a competition…you’ll get dinging a bit.)
2) Once you have your bottles moved over to the capping table, place a cap on the bottle, hold it on firmly with your index finger and tip the bottle upside down and back (rather gently)…once.
3) Set the bottle down and wait a moment and have your capper ready. You’ll see the cap burp once or twice as the O2 is pushed out.
4) Once you see the cap actually start to rise on top of the foam…cap it. There will be minimal foam spillage depending on the CO2 levels.
5) You’ve now capped a bottle that should be devoid of all oxygen, and captured most of the CO2 that was in the foam (this will be reabsorbed into solution.)
As an added safety measure, I’d recommend using O2 absorbing bottle caps. Between the CO2 purge that occurred using the above method, and employing O2 absorbing caps, the shelf life of your beer will be indefinite.
Hope this helps. (I had to learn the hard way about oxidized beer)
Just want to chime in here.
I put together one of these and bottled the last gallon or so of my 14month old Eisbock in little 6.3s Worked like a champ. My own observations. Get more than 3-4 ready at a time as the beer in the line and cane slowly foams up and an ounce or two needs to be purged b4 the next set of bottles. Even still, the first one foams a bit more than the subsequents. I had my EB pretty fizzy (about 3volumes) and quite cold so even loosing a bit during this will be fine I think.
I pulled the tip off of my bottling wand as the length was about right already. Can't wait to take one to Pokernight/HB meeting this week.
If BM PMs me his addy, I would send him a couple little Christmas presents to express my appreciation.
__________________ Bottled Version 8 Eisbock - #6011 Secondary raspberry pLambic #9001 Coming Up CDA- #1008 PLanned Version 8 Eisbock- #1009
The owner of my LHBS game me a discount because of this baby. I bought my #2 stopper and a #3 (I have a 60+ Grolsh swing-top collection) and he questioned why I was putting a stopper in the Grolsh bottle. After the explanation he looked wonderfully amused and I'm sure he'll be showing other this.
I've been doing this for quite some time and know several people who have been as well. I stick the bottle filler in my picnic tap rather than the racking cane. The trick is to keep everything as cold as possible so the c02 will be retained in solution as much as possible and, like said before...cap on foam. I have worked on a brewery bottling line and capping on foam was the most important factor in the process.
I bought my #2 stopper and a #3 (I have a 60+ Grolsh swing-top collection) and he questioned why I was putting a stopper in the Grolsh bottle. After the explanation he looked wonderfully amused and I'm sure he'll be showing other this.
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