Calling all Blichmann BeerGun owners

OK, I'm about to pull the trigger on one of these. I've looked at some old threads, but I'd like to hear from some folks who have one and have used it.

My main concern is the longevity of carbonation after the bottle is capped.

Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas!

in general you will lose some carbonation. you can minimize the effect by having the keg chilled, the bottles chilled, and the beer slightly more carbonated than it needs to be. this will allow for some off gassing to occur so that it will maintain the carbonation you desire in the bottles. also, you want to cap them as quickly as you can. it works best if you have two people, one to work the beer gun, the other to cap. A bench capper works well for this, and when i plan to use my beergun more often, i will definitely invest in one.

How much does it lose? Would the loss be less with a regular counter-pressure filler??? I'd hate to have to over-carbonate a whole keg just to fill a few bottles...........

I use one for the few times I bottle. It's always worked out well, and I've yet to overcarbonate or chill the bottles.

EDIT: My draft system is balanced at 10-12 psi with a Turbotap, so my beer is actually overcarbonated when I dial the pressure down and attach the Beer Gun.

a counter pressure bottle filler is better. period.

i use a beer gun for the simplicity and ease of use.

i only overcarbonate by 1-2 psi, which can easily be undone in a day or two, not that difficult.

if you don't know why a CPBF is better, i'll explain: with a CPBF, you purge with co2, then place the tube down with the stopper sealing the bottle. you fill until the pressure equalizes, then you vent the excess pressure relatively slowly to fill the rest of the bottle under pressure. this keeps more co2 in solution, and also prevents any oxygen from being diffused back into the bottle. this is why there are generally three valves, and also a bit more comlicated to use, and to me, it would be a pain to use. this is why i chose to go with the beer gun - trigger to purge with co2, trigger to push beer, cap.

gnef said:

this keeps more co2 in solution, and also prevents any oxygen from being diffused back into the bottle.

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I don't see how any oxygen would get into the bottle when using a beer gun. CO2 is heaver than air so when you purge the bottle, all air is removed. When the bottle is filled the beer pushes CO2 out of the bottle. The directions say to do a short burst of CO2 in the head space of the bottle before it is capped. Could a CPBF do that much better?
In interest of the discussion, I just opened a bottle of my pumpkin beer that was filled with the beer gun. I know - it's only 10 in the morning but I felt like I had to do it.
I don't think it lost much if any carbonation. I'm quite satisfied with the Beer Gun.

Mine just came today so I can't wait to try it out.

Used my Beer Gun a few times and haven't had any problems with the finished product. I've never used a CPBF, but can't imagine one being that much better at preserving the carbonation. Beer I've bottled with the Gun has been just about the same several weeks later as the beer drawn from the tap.

I've never overcarbed, but I do chill the bottles to the same temp as the beer by putting a bunch in the kegerator before filling. Other than that, I follow the instructions and it's worked great every time. Well, except for the time I put the little rubber stopper at the tip on backwards...

DrewsBrews said:

Well, except for the time I put the little rubber stopper at the tip on backwards...

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Did it then turn into a 'true' beer gun?

I own both a counter pressure bottle filler and a beer gun. I have filled several hundred with both, and feel that the beer gun is easier to operate and I have had several bottles filled over a year the beer is bad, but the carbination remained rather constant and about the same leval that I filled it with. I my opinion would'nt bother with a counter pressure bottle filler!!!! The Beer Gun is so much easier to operate!!!!

there will always be diffusion of gasses, purging with co2 will help getting rid of most of the o2 out, but o2 can still diffuse back in. with a CPBF, the stopper is there creating a positive pressure, whereas there is no positive pressure in the bottle with the beer gun.

i'm just playing devil's advocate here. i have a beer gun, and like using it, especially over the thought of having to work three valves just to bottle one beer. with that said, the limitations of the beer gun should also be stated clearly. yes, it is easier to use, but it does have some drawbacks.

Thanks guys! I went ahead and ordered one from Brew City Supplies. They had the best price at $79 for the whole kit & kaboodle including free shipping.

For the occasional bottling for competitions and brew club activities, this will work great!

good price! have fun!

EdWort said:

Thanks guys! I went ahead and ordered one from Brew City Supplies. They had the best price at $79 for the whole kit & kaboodle including free shipping.

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Dang I always miss the good deals! That is a great price.

EdWort said:

Thanks guys! I went ahead and ordered one from Brew City Supplies. They had the best price at $79 for the whole kit & kaboodle including free shipping.

For the occasional bottling for competitions and brew club activities, this will work great!

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SWEET deal! Glad I ran across this thread because I was JUST about to order one for about $20 more plus shipping!

First Apfelwein - now this! You're the man Ed!!!

Orpheus said:

Did it then turn into a 'true' beer gun?

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Nah... just made a lot of foam because the nozzle wasn't completely seating when I'd let go of the trigger. A tiny bit of pressurized beer was squirting out and instantly turning to foam. Soon as I realized the problem and turned the thing around, all was good.

I just bought a beergun and did my first run with it this evening. I had 2 beers on tap, and I filled some bottles of both kinds (in future I plan on not doing it this way, one batch at a time instead, but there's a homebrew competition coming up and I needed to catch up). By and large it worked well, since I really had no alternative to bottle my carbonated beer. Tried using a large diameter hose but did not find one that had an I.D. large enough to fit over the tap nozzle but yet an O.D. small enough to fit inside a beer bottle. Did not really want to have to split my batches, kegging most and then adding priming sugar or carbonation tabs and bottling the rest. That left some form of filler, and the beergun seemed to be the simpler solution.

So the first run went OK, but I did have a couple of small problems:

1) On the second bottle I was being careless and managed to knock the rubber tip off in the bottle, which I didn't realize until after I let go of the trigger and beer kept dispensing! "Wet cleanup, aisle four..."

2) I should have bled off the keg pressure before using the gun. I had turned the regulator down to the recommended 5psi, but the kegs were still at more like 8-9psi and so the first bottles were extra foamy.

3) The provided 5' gas hose is a bit short for my setup, so I may make a longer one. Of course I'm not going to monkey with the length of the beer hose unless I feel like recalculating the line balance.

All told it's an impressive product.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be using mine to bottle some carbed Apfelwein soon as well as some home brew.

I'm using 32 oz. Tecate Bottles, so bottling will be kept to a minimum. I just ordered two cases of the beer, so I need to buy some limes and get cracking. That stuff goes down very easy after working in the yard IF I have some lime with it. So for $2.30 I get a quart of beer and a nice brown 32 oz. cappable bottle.

Just a side note.
I used my beer gun to bottle my pumpkin ale in November and it is still properly carbonated.

For what it's worth, I bottled a 12 pack of Sweet Porter back in February using the old racking cane through a #2 stopper method and cracked one two weekends ago. Still perfectly carb'd.

I'll save my money for some Perlicks I've been eyeing for a month or so.

Good to know the carbonation is still there after the fact. I'm looking forward to bottling some Apfelwein for gifts this Christmas. The 32 oz. Tecate bottles will look good with a ribbon on them. Now to work on some labels.

Just ordered mine this morning..Tired of trying to fill bottles and growlers from the tap.

EdWort said:

Thanks guys! I went ahead and ordered one from Brew City Supplies. They had the best price at $79 for the whole kit & kaboodle including free shipping.

For the occasional bottling for competitions and brew club activities, this will work great!

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Thanks for the heads-up just ordered mine

Mine came a couple weeks ago. I have yet to use it, but I'm looking forward! Seems to be fairly simple and foolproof.

I'm looking at getting a Beergun, but I don't know exactly what I need to get with it. My regulator has a wye adaptor on it and is currently running to two kegs, and all connections are flare and not barbed, so I figure I can just unscrew one of the gas QDs and attach it to the Beergun and have the other gas line running to the keg I'd be bottling from. The stuff I know I would need would be a length of beer line with flare fittings on each end and a liquid QD to attach to one of the ends. Anything else necessary? Does the Beergun have threading for flare connections on it, or is some sort of adaptor needed?

Get it here and you get every thing you need, including free shipping.

Sweet, just ordered one.

Just sold mine.

I never could get it right, my beers were always undercarbed and it too was messy.

I'm going back to filling bottles with a cobra tap and capping on foam. Works great.

wow. you have more success with the picnic tap than you did with the beer gun. I find that surprising, but i guess we all find different things that work for each of us.

I got mine about a year ago.
It's really nice, although I'm not sure about having to use the whole 10' of tubing.
All that does is let the beer warm up.
I'm going to try with a 3' hose and see what happens.

Also, I use pin lock and had plenty of stainless parts & pieces, so I didn't have to buy the additional kit.

I'll post when I shorten the tubing and let you know if it worked.

well, the ten feet of tubing is to have more restriction. when i use my beergun, i try to keep as much of the tubing refrigerated, and fill as many bottles as quickly as possible. this is where it is nice to have a helper.

A video of mine in action:

[youtube]WWaUK6BhnZw[/youtube]

Well, yesterday I actually used my BBG to bottle 5 gallons of Kolsch for a neighbor (only after almost 2 years).

My neighbor brought over clean bottles which we sanitized and chilled. I then brought in the keg from the garage keezer and put a KEGLove on it to keep it chilled.

I must say I am very pleased at the performance of it. It made bottling 5 gallons of Kolsch a snap and the ability to purge the bottle with CO2 was too cool. I still use the BMBF for the occasional three bottle fill, but the BBG rocks when you have a bunch of bottles to fill. This is one way to make room in the keezer for fresh beer. Used about 2 psi to fill and after the first bottle, the rest had very little foam. Just enough to fill the neck and to cap on the foam.

I filled the bottle over a Rubbermaid Bus tray, so any spillage was contained.

If you lots of bottles to fill, the Blichmann Beer Gun gets two thumbs up from me.

EdWort said:

Get it here and you get every thing you need, including free shipping.

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Looking into getting one of these, but the Brew City site is not there or something.????

Try this link:

http://store.fastcommerce.com/BrewC...pping-ff808081178baa8501178bd40dca1167-p.html

So how long once the beer is put into a bottle with the beer gun will the beer stay fresh and carbed I see many people don't have problems with the carbonation level but what about beer drinkability? Will the beer stay fresh for a week? a month? a year or years?

Brad said:

So how long once the beer is put into a bottle with the beer gun will the beer stay fresh and carbed I see many people don't have problems with the carbonation level but what about beer drinkability? Will the beer stay fresh for a week? a month? a year or years?

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Old topic!

Same as any other vessel...dependent on gravity and ranging from 1yr-10yrs+.

just pulled the trigger on a blichman beergun. I'm entering 2 beers into a hombrew contest for my first time, but forgot to bottle some instead of kegging the whole batch.

now if i can just keep myself from drinking it all before it gets here

BierMuncher said:

For what it's worth, I bottled a 12 pack of Sweet Porter back in February using the old racking cane through a #2 stopper method and cracked one two weekends ago. Still perfectly carb'd.

I'll save my money for some Perlicks I've been eyeing for a month or so.

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I used this trick a few times and it works perfectly! I don't even chill the bottles. I fill growlers for friends this way too.

So I have a question, I just got one of these and I am a little ticked about it not coming with the Y or T that you need on the regulator. But why do you need a second gas line going from the co2 regulator to the keg? To keep it pressurized? But if the keg is pressurized already do you still need it?