Bottle Not Completely Filled.

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LakesideBrewing

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Hi,

I just had a horrible experience(s) with counter pressure bottle filling. After several attempts I finally got the beer to flow OK. My only problem is that I didn't quite fill the bottles (12oz) all the way to the top. I'd say I'm about one and a half inches from the top, almost the entire neck of the bottle. This happened because I blasted Co2 on top of the beer before capping and I ended up blowing out some beer from the bottle. I'm only doing this to enter a homebrew comp and the deadline is next week. Will these to OK? Is it critical for carbonation levels for the beer to be right to the top of the bottle?

Thanks,
Mike
 
The bottles may take a little longer to carbonate with the extra head space but they should still carb up fine for you.

If the competition is next week though, even if they had been properly filled you are not leaving enough time for proper conditioning and carbonating unless the actual judging is still a few weeks out and they don't refrigerate your beers in the meantime. If they do you will be serving the judges flat, unconditioned beer:(

Average time to condition and carbonate a properly filled and primed bottle is 3 weeks at 70 degrees. That all being said, if everything goes well you may get dinged a point or two for improperly filled bottles but my concern at this point is not leaving enough time to even taste what you are submitting!
 
The bottles may take a little longer to carbonate with the extra head space but they should still carb up fine for you.

If the competition is next week though, even if they had been properly filled you are not leaving enough time for proper conditioning and carbonating unless the actual judging is still a few weeks out and they don't refrigerate your beers in the meantime. If they do you will be serving the judges flat, unconditioned beer:(

Average time to condition and carbonate a properly filled and primed bottle is 3 weeks at 70 degrees. That all being said, if everything goes well you may get dinged a point or two for improperly filled bottles but my concern at this point is not leaving enough time to even taste what you are submitting!

Thanks for the response.
I guess I failed to point out that this beer is fully carbonated and I was filling the bottles with a counter pressure bottle filler from a keg.

Thanks!
 
They might be a little flat, given that amount of head space. If you have more to refill a couple more bottles, I would. CP fillers take a few tries to get the hang of, they're kind of a pain in the ass at first. However, if you purge the bottle of O2 completely before you start letting the beer in, you shouldn't have to top it off with any CO2, there should already be some there. Hope this helps, and good luck with the Comp!
 
LaFinDuMonde said:
Thanks for the response.
I guess I failed to point out that this beer is fully carbonated and I was filling the bottles with a counter pressure bottle filler from a keg.

Thanks!

Got it:)
Good luck with the comp!
 
They might be a little flat, given that amount of head space. If you have more to refill a couple more bottles, I would. CP fillers take a few tries to get the hang of, they're kind of a pain in the ass at first. However, if you purge the bottle of O2 completely before you start letting the beer in, you shouldn't have to top it off with any CO2, there should already be some there. Hope this helps, and good luck with the Comp!

I guess this would be true if you gradually lifted the filler out and let the CO2 stay on top of the beer. I see most videos fill to the top and then pull out the filler leaving an inch of air in the neck that was just pulled back into the bottle, sure to have some O2 in it. Based on that, I don't see the point in filling the bottle with CO2.
 
Yeah, possibly, I would rather have a bottle full of CO2 and risk adding a small amount of O2, than just pour the beer into an O2 filled bottle. That being said, if you can gently release some CO2 on top, go for it. I wouldn't advise not purging the bottle though.
 
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