We no need no stinking beer gun...

I tried this back in December and it seemed to work well. I intentionally didn't open one of the bottles so I'll open it soon to see how it works long term. I only ran into 2 problems: 1) I broke a picnic tap shoving the racking cane into it's end. That sucked! 2) The racking cane popped out of the picnic tap once spewing beer all over the place. That sucked even more! Ever since I broke that picnic tap I've been a tad hesitant to try this again. Any tips on how not to break the tap?

thanks

Beavdowg said:

Any tips on how not to break the tap?

thanks

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You might want to try to heat up both the picnic tap and the racking cane with a heat gun or hair dryer (or even some really hot water). That might give it some plasticity.

I plan on adding a bead of superglue around where they meet to make sure it doesn't pop out.

I use a bottling wand, it is the right size and length.
The wand i have the spring end comes off.
And the wand fits perfectly into the picnic tap.
Things i forgot to do - chill the bottles before filling, cutting an angle in the wand and foaming to cap.
But they still turned out pretty good and i will be trying this out again on my next batch.
I like to bottle a few to take to friends so they can try my beer.
Thank you for the post.

i had a broken cane (that i intended to use for the bmbf) and a good cane sitting in a bucket. after sampling a few from the keg i guess i grabbed the wrong one and started cutting an angle into the end...oops. but you know what? totally worth it!
thanks!!

Travis31 said:

I use a bottling wand, it is the right size and length.
The wand i have the spring end comes off.
And the wand fits perfectly into the picnic tap.
Things i forgot to do - chill the bottles before filling, cutting an angle in the wand and foaming to cap.

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I bottle about 4 cases a week this way.

Woot woot, on the bottling wand, thats exactly what fits in my picnic tap, I didnt use it anyway to dang slow to fill the wine bottles, bottleing bucket works better. Always chill the bottles at least in the fridge, and set the bottles in a low pan as you fill and cap on foam.

And with the money I saved not buying a stinking beer spritzer thingy I used to but 2 more referbed corny kegs. 10 more gallons of carbed beer verses some stainless gizmo.... Comon you do the cost benifit analysis......

More beer always better:rockin:

I searched this thread and didn't see the answer. I apologize if I missed it.

How do you cut the angle at the end of the plastic filler? I tried using a razor-blade and rolling the tube (tricky to do with an angle) but it ended up snapping and the edge of the tube is really rough. I'm afraid to use it with my beer. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm going away for a week and would like to bring some of my newly kegged Rye IPA with me.

DanPoch said:

I searched this thread and didn't see the answer. I apologize if I missed it.

How do you cut the angle at the end of the plastic filler? I tried using a razor-blade and rolling the tube (tricky to do with an angle) but it ended up snapping and the edge of the tube is really rough. I'm afraid to use it with my beer. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm going away for a week and would like to bring some of my newly kegged Rye IPA with me.

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I was just going to ask the exact same question! I haven't cut yet but was going to last night and got nervous. I was thinking about heating it first, but the example is so perfectly cut! I too would be curious if anyone else had a solution.

I used a hacksaw. Then used an exacto knife to clean the inner edges and sandpaper for the outer edges.

I also used a hacksaw (the one on my wife's Swiss Army Knife, in fact), then used very fine sandpaper to create a very smooth, clean edge. Worked great for me.

Same idea: I used a coping saw and fine sandpaper.

I used this method to fill a lot of bottles, and it was doable. My biggest issue was all of the beer that I'd lose when it leaked out of the racking cane piece after filling one. I borrowed a friend's Beer Gun and bottled a few cases with it really quickly... and lost almost no beer. I ended up buying the beer gun. This method does work, and is great on a budget... but the Beer Gun makes the whole process a *lot* easier.

diatonic said:

I used this method to fill a lot of bottles, and it was doable. My biggest issue was all of the beer that I'd lose when it leaked out of the racking cane piece after filling one. I borrowed a friend's Beer Gun and bottled a few cases with it really quickly... and lost almost no beer. I ended up buying the beer gun. This method does work, and is great on a budget... but the Beer Gun makes the whole process a *lot* easier.

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Could you not just allow the "wasted" beer to drop into the bottle and so then you wouldn't lose any?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

I am wondering if instead of the picnic tap and racking can, you could just attach a bottling cane to 7ft of line and the stopper of course.

OR can the stopper too but pre-fill your bottles with a little CO2. I was thinking you could just blow a little cO2 in each bottle or toss a bunch of bottle in a tub and melt a cube of dry ice in said tub, gravity should allow the CO2 to enter the bottles and expel the oxygen.

At worst you should only loose a wee bit of carbonation, so perhaps over carb, just slightly before hand.

diatonic said:

I used this method to fill a lot of bottles, and it was doable. My biggest issue was all of the beer that I'd lose when it leaked out of the racking cane piece after filling one. I borrowed a friend's Beer Gun and bottled a few cases with it really quickly... and lost almost no beer. I ended up buying the beer gun. This method does work, and is great on a budget... but the Beer Gun makes the whole process a *lot* easier.

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It does take some practice. First time I wasted about half a beer filling a sixer. Now, I can do the bottles over a towel, instead of a bucket, and not loose more than a drop.

Hammy71 said:

It does take some practice. First time I wasted about half a beer filling a sixer. Now, I can do the bottles over a towel, instead of a bucket, and not loose more than a drop.

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Is there a method you'd recommend?

Haven't read the whole thread in quite a while. Basically I do what BM said to do from the beginning. I don't chill the line or bottles, other than using star-san mixed up with cold water. I dial down the pressure and fill away. When foam comes out I quickly move to the next bottle. I guess the secret is having everything available in arms reach, with minimal time between bottles. Like I said, I think practice is key.

This may be a dumb question. I've got my cascadian IPA kegged in my fridge and I plan on bottling the last 2 gallons I have left with the BMBG (I live in NYC so no room for a keggerator). Question is, after they're bottled, do I have to store the beers in the fridge, or can I store them at room temp? And what is the final word on the shelf life of the beers with the BMBG?

There is no final word But you can store them at room temp. I have had beers bottled up to a year so far using this method with no discernible loss of quality.

-Joe

It certainly seems cheaper, but the one thing that the beer gun allows that this setup doesnt is the ability to fill your bottle with co2 prior to filling. This seems to me that it would push out the oxygen and thus extend the shelf life of your beer, would it not? Or does it not make that much of a difference?

Im in the market for something like this so all advice would be appreciated

Forgive me if you guys have already answered my above question 1000 times, I didnt really read most of the responses on this thread due to its length

Meatball358 said:

It certainly seems cheaper, but the one thing that the beer gun allows that this setup doesnt is the ability to fill your bottle with co2 prior to filling. This seems to me that it would push out the oxygen and thus extend the shelf life of your beer, would it not? Or does it not make that much of a difference?

Im in the market for something like this so all advice would be appreciated

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true, but you could easily rig something up. Either squirt a little in the bottle or place all of your bottles in a tub with some dry ice, CO2 is heavier than air and will fill the bottles.

I wonder if you could put sterilized bottles in a tub, with a lid and airlock and have CO2 pumped in over a few days from a blow off tube as you are fermenting???

TheJadedDog said:

You posted this just in time for me. I am just getting started with kegging and typically give away a 12 pack or so every few batches.

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Someone made a short reference to this above but to be clear, don't forget to purge your head space in the keg a few times with CO2 after you remove your "12 beers" If you're letting the keg carbonate with sugar (since you probably had to add sugar for the bottles to work), you will probably want to put that head space up to ...what.... 20 PSI? Anyone? I'll let an expert suggest a number but I'm just saying to give the sugar a 'boost' or it will not create enough pressure to actually carbonate the rest of your batch with that much head space. I think that was written in English but I haven't had my coffee yet.

Tried this setup last night to bottle some of my Black IPA and it worked great! I was amazed at how simple it is.

I did have one question that I was hoping to get some clarification on that I didn't see in the back-read. When BM says:

Before locking down the cap on each bottles...tip the bottle on its side and back (holding the cap on with your finger of course). This will cause the beer to begin to foam.

I just put my finger on the cap, took the bottle and slowly turned it upside down. It started foaming but only a couple of the sixer had foam that overflowed. Is my method flawed?

yes and no.

Somehow someway you want to be putting the cap onto a small, but not volcanic pillow of foam when capping to insure that there is no O2 in the bottle if storing for an extended period of time. Any way you achieve that that works for you is fine.

Quick question for those of you who have been doing this a bit longer than I. With this method, which i have used a couple of times now, I have always kept the bottles cold after filling. Does the carbonation or flavor get affected at all if you allow them to get to room temperature for storage? The reason i ask is i am going on a 2 week vacation and want to take my brews with me, but i don't want to have to keep several cases cold all the time.

I made a BMBG a while ago and love its simplicity although the first time I used it I didn't refrigerate the bottle (big mistake).

One question: If I decided to use this with a growler, What size drilled stopper do I need ? a size 5.5 or 6 ?

Pagey2379 said:

Quick question for those of you who have been doing this a bit longer than I. With this method, which i have used a couple of times now, I have always kept the bottles cold after filling. Does the carbonation or flavor get affected at all if you allow them to get to room temperature for storage? The reason i ask is i am going on a 2 week vacation and want to take my brews with me, but i don't want to have to keep several cases cold all the time.

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You may get some sediment in the bottles, but you'll probably be just fine. I've bottled beer off my kegerator from kegs that have been cold for months. Put the bottles on a shelf in the basement and after a month or two there was cloudy sediment in the beers. Yeast are very resilient, and seem to be hard to kill...lol. I think two weeks should be fine. There was nothing wrong with the beer, just had to treat like it was bottle conditioned. But ever since, I made great pains to keep my beer chilled. If your only going for a couple of weeks, I think you'll be OK.

Banjoman76 said:

I made a BMBG a while ago and love its simplicity although the first time I used it I didn't refrigerate the bottle (big mistake).

One question: If I decided to use this with a growler, What size drilled stopper do I need ? a size 5.5 or 6 ?

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Depends on the growler. I ended up using a better bottle stopper. Worked great!

OK...this will be my last post here. My name is Tim and I love the BeerGun.

I am a convert after bottling around 50 various bottles using the BeerGun last month. I still have my cobra-tap/bottle-filler/poor-mans counter-pressure filler just in case I am tempted back to it.

I've been following this thread for a while now and have tried filling some pints from my kegs with this. And I have a question about releasing the pressure in the keg.

I've read that a rapid decrease in pressure, like opening the relief valve all the way, will cause some of the CO2 to burst out of solution and create a 'head' in the keg. This in turn uses up some of the head creating and keeping proteins that are in the beer. Perhaps it's not using enough to worry about, but I didn't see anything here about releasing the pressure in the keg slow or fast, so thought I'd ask the question.

Does the pressure in the keg have to be reduced slowly?

DanPoch said:

I've been following this thread for a while now and have tried filling some pints from my kegs with this. And I have a question about releasing the pressure in the keg.

I've read that a rapid decrease in pressure, like opening the relief valve all the way, will cause some of the CO2 to burst out of solution and create a 'head' in the keg. This in turn uses up some of the head creating and keeping proteins that are in the beer. Perhaps it's not using enough to worry about, but I didn't see anything here about releasing the pressure in the keg slow or fast, so thought I'd ask the question.

Does the pressure in the keg have to be reduced slowly?

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You know, I used to think the same, but do not think I've ever released the pressure one way or another. I usually let the pressure off first then set all my connections. Maybe the rest allows it all to settle down. I do not bottle too much since I hate it. I'll have to see what I do next time.

This thing is great I got one put together and used it for the second time. It really is very easy to bottle up a few beers to take to a friends house. Thanks for helping out and making it so easy.

I just built this with the cane from a busted autosiphon and a hacksaw. (And my wife complains when I never throw anything out.) Can't wait to try it out, although that's contingent on my empty kegs becoming full kegs.

I didn't get a good clean angled cut, as once I was halfway through, the pressure from the saw was enough to snap the cane in half at the cutting point. Is this going to be OK?

bernerbrau said:

II didn't get a good clean angled cut, as once I was halfway through, the pressure from the saw was enough to snap the cane in half at the cutting point. Is this going to be OK?

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That happened with mine too. I sanded the edges with a 200 then a 400 grit paper and it's worked just fine.

And like you I need to get more filled kegs too

Hah, this worked perfectly!!! Thanks!!! I was honestly thinking about spending the money on that dumb beer gun, but now I won't need to.

subscribed

Bottled some RIS and Strong Scotch for a buddy's birthday beer tasting competition using the very basic picnic faucet - racking cane - bung setup and came in first and second place. And that was my first time even trying this. Can't wait to pop some of these open in a few months and see how they kept up... really I probably can't wait.

Thanks a ton!

Thanks biermuncher, i'll try it. Sounds good.

So i have had the stuff to do this for a while and we decided to bottle my friends Thunderstruck that has been in my fridge for a couple of weeks. Ill start off by saying it is very cheap and easy to assemble the device, as far as pressing the bung and releasing pressure this looked like a PITA. I didn't mind since I made him bottle all his beer. My advice would be only using this to bottle some 6'rs for friends or a couple at a time. A whole batch took it's tole on his thumb. he figured out a trick pushing up on one side of the stopper while down on the other. Not much foam and after a few bottles we got it down. After pulling out the Cane we filled them up a little more normally and capped since the foam was around the rim. If I were to do this on a normal basis for clarity, carbonation, or cleaner beer without yeast, I would buy a beer gun. Maybe it takes some time to get use to or the bung to loosen up. Either Way it worked with a little effort. We cracked one open at the end and it was perfectly carbonated as if it were straight from the tap.

On the plus side I had some left over so I can drink.

Good thread I would suggest trying this for as a cheap method for bottling a few brews.

And Im not a total dick I did help him cap the beers + show him how to use the Cheap CPBF, and store the beer in my Keg.

Cheers

I recently entered a two different beers into comp that were filled using this method. While they didn't place, there were no comments from judges stating oxidation. Good enough for me.

I've got my filler hooked to an adapter that screws into my Perlick taps. From the adapter there is a length of tube, just long enough for the wand and adapter to touch. This leaves the wand fairly rigidly attached. I just slide the bottle onto the wand, hold the bottle and bung with one hand, pull tap handle with the other hand.

I setup a folding table under my taps with a cake pan to collect any drippings. I really think I am going to exchange the racking cane with a bottling wand and see how that goes. Every time I fill a bottle the cane drips empty, thus pushing O2 into the next bottle. I think a wand may work better because it will remain filled (or at least partially filled).

I am also going to try using a hose clamp (with thumb screw) above the bung on the wand. This way when I force the bottle upwards on the cane, the bung automatically stays put. The thumb screw will make for quick adjustment for different bottle sizes.