Pop bottles instead of kegs ?

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brewman !

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So I am getting back into brewing and I'm wanting to go to larger batches because, well, my beer seems to disappear. (My friends drink it...)

Everything is good except that bottling is getting to be a pain. Storing, washing, sanitizing, rinsing, filling. I also make wine and I've noticed that its much faster to bottle wine compared to beer, mainly due to the size of the container.

I've kegged before. I have mixed feelings about it. While on one hand its much more convenient at bottling time, they have their drawbacks. First of all, you pretty much need a dedicated fridge for storing them. And taking a keg somewhere and serving it is a pain.

I'm beginning to think that storing carbonated and maybe non carbonated beverages in 2 and 3L plastic bottles might be ideal for everything except esthetics. Who wants to drink beer from a 2L pop bottle ? On the other hand when one primes with corn sugar you never drink from the bottle either - its always poured into a glass. So what is the difference ?

And while we are at it, one could set up a small fridge with taps and feed them from 2 and 3 L pop bottles. In such a situation one doesn't see the "transportation" container anyway. Imagine having 6 or 8 different brews on tap from a small fridge !

I'm thinking that one could rack all the finished product into 2 and 3L pop bottles. Clear, green, whatever is needed. I've built pop bottle caps that have a shraeder valve in them. Just like filling up a car tire. After bottling, one could pressurize each bottle with CO2 to carbonate it. Much easier than counter pressure bottling ! After the CO2 has been absorbed, one could change caps to a regular bottle cap.

At serving time, one could either pour directly from the bottle if its going to be consumed quickly or swap on a serving cap that has a pickup line and pressure line. Store it in a fridge, connect it to a tap, wala, beer on tap.

For serving away from home, one could easily take a bottle to wherever one is going. One 2L bottle is the same as a six pack. If one wanted to get fancy, one could put taps on a small cooler, throw in 2,3,6... bottles, throw in some ice and wala a tailgate party tap fridge.

I know people are going to say that the beer will oxidize but I don't think that plastic is nearly as porous as people think.

Am I wrong ? Has anyone stored beer or wine in a pop bottle for a long time ?
 
I've done it. Put beer and wine both into 2 liter bottles, 20 oz. bottles, etc.
I quit simply because of esthetics. I went to bottling my wine in 1500 ml. bottles, and my beer in 40's.
I like your idea of force-carbonating in the bottle and tapping it later. Why not just prime the beer at bottling and tap it in a couple of weeks?

Seems that beer will keep in nearly any container. Man has been brewing beer much longer than we've been capping bottles. The easiest solution is to drink it relatively fresh. don't give oxidation a chance to become an issue.
 
It looks as though you are going to give this a try, no matter what anyone says. Just go ahead and try, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Now if you were going to store the beer for 6 months, then it might oxidize, but it seems as though you will be drinking it regularly so you should have nothing to fear. I keg my beer and couldn't be happier! However, I have 4 5L mini kegs, for which I built taps, I also got a small cooler for them. The setup is portable so I take it to parties, the reaction on the people is great!
 
I might be missing something, but I think there is a problem putting a soda bottle on a tap.

Normally, when you run a tap system off a corny, CO2 from the cylinder pushes the beer out the lines and maintains the pressure in the keg. With a soda bottle, there isn't a gas-in connection to maintain pressure. I would think that it would dispense initially, but once the pressure was bled off the beer would stop flowing and the CO2 would begin to come out of solution making the beer go flat.

Perhaps this wouldn't be a huge problem with only 2 or 3 litres, but it seems to me that volume shouldn't be an issue.
 
I did it, there are plans for a tap manifold on the net. I made the little taps, and you can push the beer with CO2, or 02 with a bike pump. The bottles work fine, I find the mini tap to be more trouble than it was worth, just open the 2 liter and drink it like a pitcher of beer. The ones i pushed with c02 did store in the fridge. As to the whole tailgate thing same thing just pour the six beers and be done with it. Keep it simple.
 
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