We no need no stinking beer gun...

paparker21 said:

Did this for the first time last night with pretty good success. Seems like I always had a little bit of foam at the start when the wand is initially empty. I also had trouble finding a pressure that worked well.

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I found that i had a little better success with a slightly higher pressure than what most say on here. I started around 3-5psi but seemed like i was losing some carb, 7-8 psi works real well for me, i set it wrong once at 10 and that was way too much. I also have about 7 ft of beerline before my picnic tap and im using a bottling wand i modified.

Wondering how well this would work on a keg carbed at room temp. I have a chilled tap system (an old cornelius President) so my kegs are sitting at room temp rather than in a refrigerator. Consequently I have to have them sitting at 28 - 30 psi to get carbed up.

Would I do the same thing as far as dropping the pressure to 5 psi and filling the bottles then take it back up to put it back on line.

Spok, that sounds correct. If you stay at 30 psi you'll have a beer pressure washer instead of a bottle filler! Your beer doesn't instantly decarb so you don't have to worry about the little time spent at low pressure. You may need to be concerned about room tempt though- cold beer foams less.

It comes out the tap at close to 32 F because of the chiller. I think the long small diameter cooling coils help keep the foaming down too. In fact I wouldn't mind a little more head on the pour.

I didn't think you'd still go through your chiller coil with this beer gun.... If you'll still be bottling cold beer, you should be a OK.

I rinsed and sanitized a little 10 oz plastic juice bottle and tried filling that straight from the tap, got about 2 inches of foam so I let the foam overflow a little then screwed the cap on tight. (wanted to take a small sample to a fellow brewer to taste) The foam settled down in a few hours leaving an inch and a half of head space in the bottle. When we poured it into glasses, got a nice head and was still carbed pretty good.

I might have to come up some tubing that will fit on/in those faucets and fill from the bottom up to see if that gets better results.

spokaniac said:

I rinsed and sanitized a little 10 oz plastic juice bottle and tried filling that straight from the tap, got about 2 inches of foam so I let the foam overflow a little then screwed the cap on tight. (wanted to take a small sample to a fellow brewer to taste) The foam settled down in a few hours leaving an inch and a half of head space in the bottle. When we poured it into glasses, got a nice head and was still carbed pretty good.

I might have to come up some tubing that will fit on/in those faucets and fill from the bottom up to see if that gets better results.

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Do you not have a bottling wand?

I do, just need to find the right size tubing to adapt it to those faucets. Their ID is bigger than a picnic tap and the angle they come out at would result in spilling beer even if it did fit right in.

spokaniac said:

I do, just need to find the right size tubing to adapt it to those faucets. Their ID is bigger than a picnic tap and the angle they come out at would result in spilling beer even if it did fit right in.

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I know it probably obvious but, make sure to sanatize the faucet before filling, if you plan on storing the beer for any length of time. Lots of nasty stuff can live on the end of those taps.

Also I would love to see a picture of the counter top chiller setup you are talking about. I have seen you mention it in a few other threads.

Here is the chiller. scoured the interwebs for info on it and could not find anything. Then gave up and called Cornelius and they scanned and emailed me the manual on it. Said it was obsoleted in the early '70s. Still works great though (knock on wood)

That is absolutlely bad ass.

I am going to start using this method and have a ton of EZ cap swingtop bottles, both 500ml and 1L. Will the #2 stopper fit those bottles as well?

Prymal said:

That is absolutlely bad ass.

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yeah it is pretty cool. Have one keg that is just carbonated water and bought some of the soda stream syrups. Just pour a shot of syrup in a glass then fill it up from the water tap for instant pop. Figure that way I can have a variety and not have to clean soda gunk from the keg since it is only water. (got that idea from another thread)

Im going to give this a go. I made a pale ale that came out beautiful and want to enter a competition with it but they want 2 / 12 oz bottles to judge, I don't want to chance making another batch, Im recovering form surgery and don't want anything to go wrong due to me being pumped up with meds . Thanks for the idea!

Quick question...anyone know if using this method multiple times in one keg is bad for the beer?...like pulling of a six pack on three different occasions...is changing the psi back and fourth effect the beer?...works great just don't want to over do it

Thanks

awarner322 said:

Quick question...anyone know if using this method multiple times in one keg is bad for the beer?...like pulling of a six pack on three different occasions...is changing the psi back and fourth effect the beer?...works great just don't want to over do it

Thanks

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Nope, it takes quite a bit of time for CO2 to come out of solution. So assuming a standard 6-pack fill takes 10-15 minutes and then you set the psi back to normal, the headspace will be filled at the correct pressure. Shouldn't have any adverse affects.

I filled a six pack and four 720ml bottles this afternoon. Was a lil messy in the beginning but buy the 3rd one I had the knack of it. I'll be sending 2 off to a competition and the others are for friends and to see how well it worked. Thanks for the thread!

So I am quite the tinkerer in the shop and this thread (took me two days to read completely) got me thinking. Everyone here seems to use the same setup. picnic tapper => partial racking cane => rubber stopper, and fills the bottle by releasing pressure on the rubber stopper.

What if there was an automatic mechanism to relieve the pressure without having to deform the bung? I'm sure i'm going to kick myself for not patenting this earlier, but what if you hooked up an adjustable regulator to a relieve tube coming out of the stopper? This way all you had to do to fill a bottle would be to secure the bung in the bottle, and fill. the regulator would automatically let out pressure when it got to the right setting, and would keep plenty of resistance in the bottle to keep foaming to a minimum.

divi2323 said:

So I am quite the tinkerer in the shop and this thread (took me two days to read completely) got me thinking. Everyone here seems to use the same setup. picnic tapper => partial racking cane => rubber stopper, and fills the bottle by releasing pressure on the rubber stopper.

What if there was an automatic mechanism to relieve the pressure without having to deform the bung? I'm sure i'm going to kick myself for not patenting this earlier, but what if you hooked up an adjustable regulator to a relieve tube coming out of the stopper? This way all you had to do to fill a bottle would be to secure the bung in the bottle, and fill. the regulator would automatically let out pressure when it got to the right setting, and would keep plenty of resistance in the bottle to keep foaming to a minimum.

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Like a store bought counter pressure filler?

kapbrew13 said:

Like a store bought counter pressure filler?

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Most of the commercially produced fillers have manual valves to bleed off the pressure. I was thinking more of something that'll automatically relieve the pressure once it gets too high.

divi2323 said:

Most of the commercially produced fillers have manual valves to bleed off the pressure. I was thinking more of something that'll automatically relieve the pressure once it gets too high.

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Auto pressure regulation would be eazy peazy. ..and cool. I'll try out your prototype.

Too bad that most release valves start at about 10psi, and we are filling at 5psi. I might search for a 5psi valve and fill at 6. It would click-fill, as it were. Ok, off to build!

edit: forgot that the pressure will be higher as the gas temperature will be higher than that of the liquid in the keg. I guess an adjustable pressure relief valve or chilling the bottles really well will be required.

Even a trigger to release pressure would work if a regulator can't be found. Something operated by one hand. Thumb to start the pour and a trigger finger to release pressure. I'm just thinking of something a little more elegant than deforming a bung or operating valves without a return spring

Originally I thought about two cobra taps back to back. One to fill. One to release pressure

My 2 cents: I bottled a Best of Show winner using the BierMuncher bottle filler. 7 months later, it's still really good. (And it's only 3.3% with low hops, so it's on the fragile side of things.) The setup just plain works. I'm fairly sure that I got the idea from this thread, so thanks, BM!

Did 32 bottles for the first time tonight and this method worked great.

Cant wait to try this!

my question is why not just take a 12 to 14" tube and wedge it in your tap spigot and use that instead of using a pick-nick faucet. I had been doing this for quite some time prior to finding this thread and it works great. I do plan on trying to find a stopper and threading my tube through it to create additional pressure in the bottle while filling and see how that goes.

Has anybody else already tried this with epic failures?

I am just setting this up and noticed that the racking cane slides really easily through the stopper. It seems like this is going to pose a problem?

Yup as expected, I tried one bottle and air escapes out so it never gets to the point where the beer stops flowing out of the tap due to pressure buildup. Anyone else have this problem?

Yep, there are oversized holes in stoppers, and undersized canes! Look for ones that slide together when wet, but not easily.

I have learned a bunch of things that have improved my brewing, techniques, etc. from this forum. This is, without a doubt, the most "slap your forehead", why the hell didn't I think of this, saved me $ thing I have used.

BM's my hero!

Has anyone used this to age a beer, say between 6-12 months? As long as your process was correct I would expect you would retain all the CO2 that was initially in the bottle and it would be able to sit at cellar temp (mid 50's) for that long and not go flat?

More than 18 months - no issues whatsoever.

Keep in mind, your capping is what will retain the carbonation!

Thanks for the quick reply r2eng. I brewed the NB bourbon barrel porter, and I wanted to keg and force carbonate, and then bottle about half for aging. I'll just keep in mind ensuring I cap on foam.

Hmm... Just tried to connect the racking cane and picnic tap and it cracked the tap. Should I replace the tap before trying this or do you think it will matter in the end? That is to say, as long as it isn't leaking, is it good to go?

TheEndlessObsession said:

Hmm... Just tried to connect the racking cane and picnic tap and it cracked the tap. Should I replace the tap before trying this or do you think it will matter in the end? That is to say, as long as it isn't leaking, is it good to go?

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you don't want a crack to allow air into the cane while transferring. The air will look like little bubbles.

I agree, check for air. If it isn't leaking air in, or beer out, then you're good to go.
I've cracked two picnic taps.

Cool. I gave it a quick check and it seems solid, but I'll make sure before I actually put beer to bottle. Thanks!

I tried this last night after trying to bottle from tap using only a short length of hose. It was a bit messy, but only because I wasn't paying attention to the CO2 pressure. If it's too high, you'll end up with a beer geyser, shooting your precious liquid through any small opening it can find. Once I lowered the pressure, everything worked great.

One super easy tip that I can add (and I haven't visited all 9 gazillion posts, so someone else may have the same or better tip) is to add a large bung (the "hollow" style, like this) upside down on the racking cane that will be positioned on top of the smaller stopper. This gave me a little more rubber to push against and also serves as a barrier to stop those rogue sprays of the vertical manner.

Other than that, I discovered that the drilled stopper I picked up is slightly larger than the cane. The stoppers are super cheap, but it's annoying to have the thing slide off.

My take on this: I use the hollowed bung which came with my carboy upside down over the top of the bottle, instead of the recommended #2 bung in the bottle.





It makes a nice tight seal. I just nudged it up when I needed to release pressure.

I filled 2 bottles today with virtually no foam. I followed the other directions from the first post in this thread just a different bung.

I used the racking cane from my auto siphon.

Easy bottle filling with equipment I already own!

The only problem I had was turning the bottle over with my thumb on the cap to bottle on foam. That made so much foam I lost at least 1 ounce on the first two bottles I tried. I had to do two more with out that step for the contest beers I was filling.

Thanks!

Question to you folks, while my wife is getting the beer out of her ear and hair; what is the real purpose of the stopper and the burping? Why can't I just fill the bottle without it? It is no worse mixing with air I figure than when I start racking into a bottling bucket. If I can get away without the stopper and not spray my wife with beer again that would be great.

Thanks for any info/thoughts!

I think the stopper causes pressure to build up which slows the flow and reduces the foaming. Maybe you let the pressure build too much. I am no expert. Just a guess.