Bottling from a pressure barrel?

Hello all

This is my first question on here so firstly hi to everyone I have enjoyed reading all the threads and learning about this wonderful beer brewing process

Like most newbies I ran into brewing like a bull in a china shop. I started with a simple bitter kit and followed ( as far as any real man would) the instructions in the kit. After two weeks in my primary I primed and bottled a few beers. The week after thinking I was the brewing king I purchased my very own pressure barrel! And transferred the rest of the batch into it added sugar and it has sat in my 'brewing lab' ever since

Now being the impatient fellow that I am I have already opened two of my bottles and have been blown away by how well it's come out! So much so that I now want to share the love with all my friends by giving them all some bottles of my first batch. Herein lies the problem and my question to you all is:

Can you bottle straight from a pressure barrel?

Will the beer loose it's carbonation?

Should I add extra sugar to the bottles or will the yeast be inactive now after such a long time

It is worth pointing out that I do have the option of buying a co2 injector for the barrel to further fizz my brew and to be honest I'm looking for an excuse to justify the expense with my 'brewing widow' so any help in that department would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry fir the newb question chaps!

I assume a pressure barrel is a keg or similar to it? If you have fully carbed beer in a keg you can bottle straight from that using a beer gun or something like BierMuncher's system found here. A lot of guys have done this and it seems to work pretty well. I have only done a couple sixpacks to test it out, but with that limited sample it worked well for me.

Fantastic advice chandlerbang!

Thanks very much for the link I can't wait to get bottling up!!

Thanks again!

Are you talking about a plastic pressure barrel that looks a bit like a cask with a pressure release membrane / injector valve on the lid?

If not, please ignore the following: (EDIT: I guess you are as you're posting from the UK)

If so, I have three of these and if I get to the point where I need to transport or store some of the beer I will fill some bottles from the barrels. (I also use one as my bottling bucket).

The main problem I find is that if you fill when the beer is under pressure, you get a lot of foam in the bottles and it takes an age to wait for it to subside and refill.

So I bought a "little bottler" wand and attached it to the tap with some silicone tubing. I then release the pressure in the barrel by undoing the top. The little bottler fills the bottles bottom-up reducing the possibility of oxidisation.

If the bottles are going to be drunk within the next few days, then I don't bother with extra priming and just rely on the already-dissolved CO2 (remember that the colder you do this the more the CO2 stays dissolved) to give that "cask conditioned" effect. If I'm going to store them for some time then I'll add 1/2 tsp sugar (or a Cooper's carbonation drop) in each bottle and condition at room temps for about two weeks. There will still be millions of the little yeasties to munch the sugar and bottle condition the beer.

Caveat: this works for the English ale styles that I brew which are much less carbonated than some other styles.

YMMV

Oh you gotta check this out [ame]http://www.youtube.com/user/BobbyFromNJ#p/search/0/CwIbFQcHYyo[/ame]

Removed by BeerEagle

BeerEagle said:

Very interesting Ziggy, but what's the relevance to this thread?

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You can even look at post number two for the answer. A lot of us yanks have no idea what a pressure barrel is. I do because I answer noob questions and the first time I heard the term I did some digging. Usually I just refer folks to one of the English brewing forums. Ziggy's trying to be helpful but probably doesn't know what a PB is either.

Edit: removed. See below.

BeerEagle said:

Thanks Revvy, but I still can't make ANY connection between OP's questions and a build video for a heating/cooling controller.

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Don't know how you got to the heating/cooling controller video.
The link was to a video showing how to bottle from a keg.

-a.

ajf said:

Don't know how you got to the heating/cooling controller video.
The link was to a video showing how to bottle from a keg.

-a.

Click to expand...

AJF thanks for pointing this out.
Ziggy, Please accept my apologies
Ditto, Revvy.

You must have thought I was being a real arrogant prīck.

Damn IPhone app click-through took me to his dual stage fermentation chamber temp controller vid (and still does). Hence my query about relevance.

I just cut and pasted the link into my iphone web browser and got the keg to bottle vid.

I have learned something.

Jedsterr: the little bottler has a valve which opens when the wand touches the bottom of the bottle, so takes the place of the tap on the wand in the video.

Also, the kegs you see in the vid will probably be cold as they're kept in a kegerator, also they will have a positive CO2 pressure from a gas cylinder.

As you fill from a pressurised (just the gas created by conditioning) Pressure Barrel, the pressure will drop and you may find air being sucked back through the tap (spigot). There are two solutions: first, open the lid of the PB to relieve the vacuum or second, buy the CO2 lid for the PB and inject gas from the sparklets-type gas bulb to maintain positive pressure.

Hello chaps

Thank you all for all the advice (and videos) and sorry for causing confusion with the pressure barrel reference.

I can't wait to get stuck into bottling from this one and you have given me an excuse to buy more 'stuff'!

Thanks again!

Jedsterr said:

Hello chaps

Thank you all for all the advice (and videos) and sorry for causing confusion with the pressure barrel reference.

I can't wait to get stuck into bottling from this one and you have given me an excuse to buy more 'stuff'!

Thanks again!

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Hey no problem, It was all my fault. I assumed you were talking about corny kegs. But I'm glad you're on track.

Ziggybrew said:

Hey no problem, It was all my fault. I assumed you were talking about corny kegs. But I'm glad you're on track.

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No, not your fault at all Ziggy, you were just doing what we all try to do and be helpful.