Bottle after kegging

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mg2010md

New Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2012
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
My husband and I just started kegging about a year ago. We are about to keg our blood orange Hefe this weekend, and he has the bright idea to bottle "just a few" so he can give them away to friends at work. My question is: can you (safely) bottle previously gas carbonated kegged homebrew, or do we need to siphon off a pre-measured volume as we are putting the rest in the keg, add the proportional amount of sugar, and bottle it the old fashion way? I just don't want exploding bottles in my fridge!
Thoughts??
 
I have a CP filler similar to the one in the link. I haven't used it in years, but they work great for the purpose you mention. It is, essentially, a manual version of the same mechanism that commercial bottle fillers use.
 
Carb in the keg and then bottle off there. You can use the Counter pressure filler above, a blichmann beer gun, or the cheap 'n' easy method of sticking a racking can in the end of the cobra tap and fill that way.

I have the beer gun which is great but a pain to set up for a couple bottles. I also have a racking cane with a #2 drilled stopper for doing just a couple bottles. As you fill, you just squeeze the side of the stopper a bit to release pressure and fill from the bottom up. Just make sure to turn the pressure down and vent before doing so to minimize foaming. Then cap on the little foam that forms in the bottle to take care of any residual oxygen.
 
Bottling already properly carbed beer from the keg is probably the most ideal. However, you can add about 1/2tsp of corn sugar to each bottle and bottle it up prior to kegging. 1/2tsp in my first ale provided perfect carbonation to all my bottles. How people say adding sugar directly to each bottle can give different levels of carb compared to batch priming just baffles me. How can a measured amount of sugar in each bottle be different than batch? To me, you have more of a risk of having different carb levels in a batch prime compared to adding it per each bottle. It's a bit more work, but if you're only bottling a dozen or so, it shouldn't take long. But this wasn't meant to start batch priming vs adding to each bottle debate. This was just my thoughts spewing out onto this post. I heart kegging...so I just do that.

Just my .02
 
Back
Top