Need to bottle from keg without counter pressure!?

I need to bottle a couple carbed Dortmunders from a corny tomorrow morning, April 6, to drop off at a competition, for which they won't be drunk until Friday, April 8.

I don't have a counter pressure bottle filler, so my plan was to chill some bottles down to close to freezing to minimize foaming, fill them from the tap with a tube to the bottom of the bottle. Will they be flat by Friday? Is it even worth it? The beers are excellent and I would like some feedback on them.

What do you all think?

ive done it wit pet bottles for friends and they sometimes didnt open them for a week. they still gave great head but i do over fill them untill there is no foam left in the bottle.. onlt thing is there is no head space which is ok for pet bottles because they can handle alot of pressure

DPlan00 said:

I need to bottle a couple carbed Dortmunders from a corny tomorrow morning, April 6, to drop off at a competition, for which they won't be drunk until Friday, April 8.

I don't have a counter pressure bottle filler, so my plan was to chill some bottles down to close to freezing to minimize foaming, fill them from the tap with a tube to the bottom of the bottle. Will they be flat by Friday? Is it even worth it? The beers are excellent and I would like some feedback on them.

What do you all think?

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Not ideal, but dial back your regulator to 2/3 PSI and vent the pressure off your keg before bottling and you should be ok. The key is, if you are producing foam, you are losing CO2. What kind of taps do you have?

Thanks for the tips. I have regular faucet taps.

you might need to purge your tap if it gives a little foam when you first pour also.. i was thinking of making the "we need no stinking beer gun" assembly since its only a party tap and a piece of racking cane with a stopper on it..

I bottle straight from my faucets. I disconnect the gas, release almost all the pressure from the keg, leaving a very little bit to very slowly push the beer put. Then I place the bottle up to the faucet, with the faucet inside the neck of the bottle, and pour the beer into it at an angle with the faucet wide open. there may be a slight bit of foam at the top (about the normal amount for the headspace of a bottled beer) and that's fine. Cap the bottle on top of the foam, and that ensures that no-very little oxygen is in the bottle.

You want it to pour slow. It usually takes me around 30-45 seconds per bottle to fill. This may not be the best method to bottle a kegged beer, as it wastes a lot of CO2, but it works if you have nothing else. I use to use a "We don't need no stinkin' beer gun", but I found it was annoying to hook up and clean, and bottling from the tap seems so much easier.

edmanster said:

you might need to purge your tap if it gives a little foam when you first pour also.. i was thinking of making the "we need no stinking beer gun" assembly since its only a party tap and a piece of racking cane with a stopper on it..

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I do this, only without the stopper. I think the stopper is a little superfluous.
Works great. No noticeable ill effects even a couple of months after bottling.

DPlan00 said:

I need to bottle a couple carbed Dortmunders from a corny tomorrow morning, April 6, to drop off at a competition, for which they won't be drunk until Friday, April 8.

I don't have a counter pressure bottle filler, so my plan was to chill some bottles down to close to freezing to minimize foaming, fill them from the tap with a tube to the bottom of the bottle. Will they be flat by Friday? Is it even worth it? The beers are excellent and I would like some feedback on them.

What do you all think?

Click to expand...

If this is for Binnys they already closed the competition.