Bottling from Keg Question

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hbhudy

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OK so I have bottled a few beers to share with friends, but that was always on the day of drinking.. I wanted to know if bottling from a keg will last like bottle conditioning/carbing will?? I would like to bottle a 12 from each keg to have some left from each brew session, and to allow me to work through my kegs a little quicker..

I know people bottle from kegs, but I was just wanting to know if they stay carbed up over the long haul..

Thanks for your feedback
HB
 
I have never bottled from a Keg (I plan to soon), but I don't see how the carbonation would vary between the two techniques over time. i.e. once the CO2 is in there it will remain unless there is a leak.

Right? am I missing something?
 
If you're going to be using long neck bottles, then you'll want to cap them as fast as possible. I've had better results using swing top bottles. I'll be testing with Belgian bottles fairly soon, which could be interesting.

Which method are you planning on using to go from keg to bottle?? I have one of the Bowie bottler setups as well as a Blichmann Beer Gun... I like the Beer Gun better (and use it more).
 
I would be filling long neck bottles with a "beer-gun" connected to a picnic tap. It sounds like there should be no issue just fill the bottles and cap quickly.

I typically increase pressure to about 20 for 12-24hrs before filling any bottles, so I will just keep doing what I do already as it sounds like this is the "standard" method and the bottles should be good for about 12months (which is what I am looking for).

Cheers
HB
 
I would be filling long neck bottles with a "beer-gun" connected to a picnic tap. It sounds like there should be no issue just fill the bottles and cap quickly.

I typically increase pressure to about 20 for 12-24hrs before filling any bottles, so I will just keep doing what I do already as it sounds like this is the "standard" method and the bottles should be good for about 12months (which is what I am looking for).

Cheers
HB

How are you connecting a 'beer-gun' to a picnic tap?? Sounds like something has been MM'd together... I use an actual, true, Blichmann Beer Gun here. Uses connections to the liquid post as well as one to a CO2 source (to purge the bottle with CO2). I also don't touch the pressure the keg is on before bottling this way. With quick closing/capping of the bottles, it's no issue.
 
speaking from experience, make sure the bottles are room temperature or colder because if you transfer the beer from the keg cold into a bottle that is warm you get a large amount of foam which most likely will produce a flatter beer.
 
speaking from experience, make sure the bottles are room temperature or colder because if you transfer the beer from the keg cold into a bottle that is warm you get a large amount of foam which most likely will produce a flatter beer.

If the keg is chilled, I put the bottles into the freezer for 15-30 minutes (after sanitizing them). Since I mostly use swing tops, it's easy to do that. For long necks, and others without the flip tops, you can cover the tops with a piece of sanitized foil.
 
I will actually be heading over to my buddy's house tonight to tap our keg of cream ale, and I am going to be taking a growler and few Grolsch swing tops to fill up and bring back with me, assuming the beer is carbonated enough since this time around we kegged it using priming sugar instead of CO2, but we don't have a beer gun so I think our best option would be to use the tubing from our autosiphon over the faucet dispenser and place the tubing at the very bottom of the grolwer and bottles, hopefully it will work out with having an abundance of foam.
 
Well our cream ale turned out very nice actually. Despite having somewhat of a Hefeweizen flavor at the beginning it finishes with a crisp ale taste. I was surprised at how well it turned out because we kegged the 5 gallons and carbonated it using 5 oz of priming sugar, which is the same amount used when bottling, and I had read on some posts and threads on here that you aren't supposed to use the same amount of priming sugar that you use when kegging. Turns out that it is just fine, plus this time around we replaced the o ring set and used some keg lube which without a doubt added to the success of this batch. I also 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.
 
I would suggest running the amount of sugar you primed with through the calculator in BeerSmith 2.x... I checked with a brew I have coming up, and get about 3.82 CO2 volumes for a 5 gallon keg primed with 5oz of sugar. A cream ale should be carbonated to 2.6-2.7 CO2 volumes.
 
I would suggest running the amount of sugar you primed with through the calculator in BeerSmith 2.x... I checked with a brew I have coming up, and get about 3.82 CO2 volumes for a 5 gallon keg primed with 5oz of sugar. A cream ale should be carbonated to 2.6-2.7 CO2 volumes.

I will double check, but the flavor doesn't lead on that the batch is overcarbonated at all
 
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