We no need no stinking beer gun...

CornyKegs 728
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Bacon488 said:
Just like cat007, I used a hack saw and sandpaper. It wasn't tough, but I imagine that a Dremel would make it way easier.
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The problem I've had with dremmels and plastic is that the plastic can melt at the cutting surface from all the friction with the disc. It can get messy and you end up having to sand off all the melted plastic burrs anyway.
 
Yambor44 said:
What do you need to remove? The end of mine just pulls off. Or leave it on and use it as is as your shut off.
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The design specifies that the end of the racking/bottling cane is mitered, rather than blunt, to allow beer to flow even when the cane is physically touching the bottom of the bottle. I was just wondering how people achieve a clean miter cut.

I ended up doing mine with a hacksaw, followed by some ultra-fine grit sandpaper and a good cleaning.
 
kombat said:
The design specifies that the end of the racking/bottling cane is mitered, rather than blunt, to allow beer to flow even when the cane is physically touching the bottom of the bottle. I was just wondering how people achieve a clean miter cut.

I ended up doing mine with a hacksaw, followed by some ultra-fine grit sandpaper and a good cleaning.
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Gotcha. :mug:
 
Question for you guys:

Two days ago I filled up two Sierra Nevada style bottles with this beer gun method. I sanitized the bottles in ice chilled water so they were nice and cold, and filled these two bottles with beer. The beer had been carbed for at least a month, so I bled off the pressure, set it to about 5 and filled the bottles slowly.

In case this matters, I bottled two beers, one with more headspace than I'd like, one with the correct amount of headspace. I opened the one with more headspace, as if it was ok I wanted to send the correctly filled one to my sister. I capped on foam and chilled in the fridge for a day. When I tried them yesterday, I felt like the carbonation was a little low in the body (though a good amount of bubbles), and little to no head. The head was also more pale and bubbly than the creamy rich head I get from the tap.

Any suggestions? Did the headspace affect anything? Do I need to let the bottles chill for longer than a day? Anyone notice anything incorrect in my setup?

Thanks for the help! I'd really like this to work because I get a lot of rich head from my kegorator and this didn't seem to replicate as well.
 
stepcg6 said:
Question for you guys:

Two days ago I filled up two Sierra Nevada style bottles with this beer gun method. I sanitized the bottles in ice chilled water so they were nice and cold, and filled these two bottles with beer. The beer had been carbed for at least a month, so I bled off the pressure, set it to about 5 and filled the bottles slowly.

In case this matters, I bottled two beers, one with more headspace than I'd like, one with the correct amount of headspace. I opened the one with more headspace, as if it was ok I wanted to send the correctly filled one to my sister. I capped on foam and chilled in the fridge for a day. When I tried them yesterday, I felt like the carbonation was a little low in the body (though a good amount of bubbles), and little to no head. The head was also more pale and bubbly than the creamy rich head I get from the tap.

Any suggestions? Did the headspace affect anything? Do I need to let the bottles chill for longer than a day? Anyone notice anything incorrect in my setup?

Thanks for the help! I'd really like this to work because I get a lot of rich head from my kegorator and this didn't seem to replicate as well.
Click to expand...

Definitely the headspace. The best ones i have had using this method were filled to the top and capped very quickly. :mug:
 
bluntsandbeers said:
Definitely the headspace. The best ones i have had using this method were filled to the top and capped very quickly. :mug:
Click to expand...

I find my bottles are ok after a week or so, if I were to bottle and then open it the next day it is a little "off" compared to right of the tap. I think the beers need some more time to adjust
 
Hi guys,

I've assembled this device myself and gave it a try this weekend. I had a minor problem: When I inserted the racking cane into the picnic tap, the tap nozzle cracked. It seems the cane is just slightly too big. Is there a trick to getting it to fit? Do you sand it down a little bit? Heat it in hot water or carefully over a flame? Or is my picnic tap sized slightly smaller than your guys'?
 
kombat said:
Hi guys,

I've assembled this device myself and gave it a try this weekend. I had a minor problem: When I inserted the racking cane into the picnic tap, the tap nozzle cracked. It seems the cane is just slightly too big. Is there a trick to getting it to fit? Do you sand it down a little bit? Heat it in hot water or carefully over a flame? Or is my picnic tap sized slightly smaller than your guys'?
Click to expand...

Your tap must be smaller, i have multiple picnic taps that it fits it too perfectly without cutting or sanding. :fro:
 
One of my taps is cracked, likely from doing this over and over. Good news is picnic taps are cheap. I believe I got mine from ritebrew
 
cat007 said:
Hey

Has anyone built a 2, 3 or 4 bottler filler version of this? I was thinking you could make a frame that held all the taps and fillers and had some sort of linkage that was connected to all the taps that activated them all at the same time? Like a quad throttle body linkage on a carburettor?

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

That, sir, is a really great idea!!!
 
bluntsandbeers said:
Cool idea but you have to cap them super quick. :eek:nestar:
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Actually I've been using the single filler technique for years now and generally fill 6-8 bottles before capping any. These bottles have stored fine for months after capping and have done very well in various competitions without any scoresheet feedback attributable to this practice. What I like about the multi-bottle filler is that potentially shortens the amount of time to fill the same number of bottles and therefore to cap them!
 
Well, I used the BMBF for the first time yesterday! It worked great! I probably wasted about 2 bottles worth of beer trying to get all the settings right and figure out what I'm doing. Thats OK though, chalk it up to learning. Next time, I shouldn't have any problems. It really is simple!:mug:
 
SCWells72 said:
Actually I've been using the single filler technique for years now and generally fill 6-8 bottles before capping any. These bottles have stored fine for months after capping and have done very well in various competitions without any scoresheet feedback attributable to this practice. What I like about the multi-bottle filler is that potentially shortens the amount of time to fill the same number of bottles and therefore to cap them!
Click to expand...

Whoa! OK. I had just always had a few that were not as carbonated as others when doing this and i figured it was from not capping them quick enough. I wonder what it was then? :confused:
 
thanx for the tip.

sure worth buying a pic nic nozzle to try it out.

already have the drilled stopper and racking cane...

GD51:mug:
 
A couple questions,

If I were to insert my bottling wand directly into the picnic tap and fill, wouldn't it purge all of the oxygen naturally since it's filling from the bottom?

If I used this method + tipped each bottle and capped on foam would I have any issues? If so, what?
 
That's the same method I use. No issues thus far, and cant think of any you might run into.
 
BuddyBrews said:
Whoa! OK. I had just always had a few that were not as carbonated as others when doing this and i figured it was from not capping them quick enough. I wonder what it was then? :confused:
Click to expand...

Well, I will point out that after I fill and before I cap, I take the wand out of the tap and spray just a bit on the top of each bottle, put on the cap but not yet crimped, tilt the bottle to get a little pressure, and as I actually crimp the cap, let a little pressure bleed off in part to vent O2. With that technique, I've gotten GREAT results!
 
kombat said:
This may have been answered somewhere in the preceding 84 pages, but in case it hasn't: How do you cut the bevel in the tip of the racking cane? Hacksaw? Hot knife? Table saw? Dremel? What's the best way to get a clean cut?
Click to expand...

80 grit sand paper at an angle, then smoothed it with finer sand paper. It took me less than a minute. That plastic does NOT hold up well against sand paper.
 
Just used this method and it seemed to work great other than the beer I wanted to keg was in a pin lock and I made one with a ball lock .....DUH


Guess I will make another :)
 
Thanks BierMuncher, I just bottled 24 of your Centennial Blondes and 12 of the house IPA to take to a party.
The process went smooth and worked perfect. Lost less the 1/4 cup of beer.
 
I know some carbonation is lost during any bottling process, so if I am bottling a cider that I want at 2.7 vols of co2, what should I carbonate it to? I planned on going to 2.85 or something close.
 
I successfully bottled a number of bottles and growlers just using the bottling cane attached to the dispensing faucet, pretty much fits exactly but I did notice that it was helpful to not even start dispensing until you had the cane inserted in the faucet and then had the cane all the way down in the bottom of the bottle/growler allowing it to be open before you flip the faucet on to pour, other wise you will shoot the bottling cane out of the faucet insert thus causing spillage and stickiness.
 
ThorGodOfThunder said:
I know some carbonation is lost during any bottling process, so if I am bottling a cider that I want at 2.7 vols of co2, what should I carbonate it to? I planned on going to 2.85 or something close.
Click to expand...

You really shouldn't lose much if you a) dispense under very low pressure (barely enough to push the beer) and b) keep everything as cold as possible from the keg to the beer line to the bottles. I don't change the carbonation at all and the first beer I ever entered in a competition won best of show. So I don't sweat the carbonation loss too much.
 
Cool, thanks Bacon. When I bottle this batch I intend to wait for a pretty cold day out (low 40s at least) and let everything sit outside overnight to get cold. Then I'll just bottle it on my deck so everything stays consistently chilled over the bottling process. I don't know what I'll do in the summer, but we'll figure it out then.
 
just made one of these today. it was quick and lovely. i will say that it wasn't mess-free though.

even with the worm clamp over my picnic faucet, it dripped slowly. plus after every squirt, there's the slow drain from the racking cane. i did it myself however. so with assistance it would have been better.

I also found that i needed to constantly "burp" the bung to allow excess pressure to release. no biggie though
 
So I just got back some score sheets from a competition I entered (foamcup.us) The 3 entries I used this method with all had comments about oxidation flaws...from 6 separate judges. I had two other entries where I didn't use this method and didn't get the comments.

I did do the put the cap on flip up over and purge the oxygen before capping. So not sure what was up. I didn't get ding for low carbonation or anything like that.

One of my brewing buddies mentioned he got the same comments using the same method....anyone else deal with this issue using the method...Personally I'm a little shock such a small amount of oxygen can cause oxidation in a week. Put I can't think of anything else that would of caused it...it was great coming out of the keg....maybe bottles weren't rinsed well enough???

Thoughts???
 
do you use star san to sanitize the bottles? If so, do you sanitize, not rinse and then put them in the freezer? Do the bottles ice up? I'm ready to go, just looking for the best sanitization process to use before immediately going to the freezer. Thanks
 
ryanmx48 said:
do you use star san to sanitize the bottles? If so, do you sanitize, not rinse and then put them in the freezer? Do the bottles ice up? I'm ready to go, just looking for the best sanitization process to use before immediately going to the freezer. Thanks
Click to expand...

Ya, I squirt the bottles with star san and let them drain, then I put a sanitized piece of tin foil on top and in the freezer it goes. There is a tiny bit of ice, but nothing to worry about
 
Ive been trying to get this to work but i cant my keg to 5 psis without it leaking. Is there anyway else to slow down the flow. Im getting alot of foam and not alot of beer.
 
Schumed said:
So I just got back some score sheets from a competition I entered (foamcup.us) The 3 entries I used this method with all had comments about oxidation flaws...from 6 separate judges. I had two other entries where I didn't use this method and didn't get the comments.

I did do the put the cap on flip up over and purge the oxygen before capping. So not sure what was up. I didn't get ding for low carbonation or anything like that.

One of my brewing buddies mentioned he got the same comments using the same method....anyone else deal with this issue using the method...Personally I'm a little shock such a small amount of oxygen can cause oxidation in a week. Put I can't think of anything else that would of caused it...it was great coming out of the keg....maybe bottles weren't rinsed well enough???

Thoughts???
Click to expand...

I actually got some oxidation comments before I started using this method (before I was just using tubing to bottle). I have entered 11 beers using this method so far and the only oxidation-like comment was from a dry hopped APA being a bit past it's prime (I got that from the keg also so I know it wasn't from bottling).

How much headspace did you have in the bottles? Did you cap on foam?
 
I bottled an entire batch for the first time in seven years with this method. It cost me less than a dollar in extra parts, took 12 bottles to figure out, and another 24 to master.

Thanks all!
 
did you have any spilling? I imagine for a large batch like yours it was pretty systematical. I filled 8 as bottles to give away so i was spilling quite a bit between bottling capping myself and filling
 
This thing is tits, and it's so cheap and easy! Bottled up my Chai Porter, had a little spillage (a good amount) but finally got a good system going. Plus growler filling works well too. I have my pressure down to 1 or 2 psi and it's perfect.
 
I spilled more beer than I liked during the first dozen bottles...enough to pour into a pint glass and drink...although hardly a squirt afterwards.

I filled six bottles up to the bottom of the bung in one pass. That filled up the bottles to about two inches from the top. I backed the filler tube up until about two inches stuck through and went around filling again. That left the beer within one inch of the top. I put on a cap, tipped the bottle 90 degrees and back with my finger on top, took the cover off until the small co2 bubbles flowed up and over, recapped on top of foam and ran the bottle capper.

This method is way easier than the actual instructions to do it! I will make sure I have a whole range of bungs for all my bottle-filling needs!!
 

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