Kegging and Bottling

Hi all,

I've been brewing for 6 months and have what I'm sure is a common dilemma. I hate bottling beer, but I love that enables me to have a variety that I can take places with me.

I'm thinking about kegging, but have a question..

Can I bottle after I keg?

Do I need to keep kegs cold once I tap them or can I have several kegs where I tap them to pour growlers?

Thanks

Yes, there are ways to bottle stuff that comes out of a keg.

Cheap way: Biermuncher's cheapo beer gun substitute (about $10) - there's a sticky for how to build it in this section of HBT

More expensive way: Blichmann beer gun. About $70-$90 for everything you'll need.

With the proper equipment you can bottle from a keg. You just have to have pearlick faucets. Check out the Bowie bottler on this site for more info on that.

As far as warm kegging then chilling in growlers. CO2 diffusion rates are a function of temp. The colder the solution the more CO2 can be dissolved at a given pressure. So while it is possible to carbonate warm beer you will most likely not have the best results.

If you do start kegging, go big. Get the largest chest freezer you can fit in ur house garage basement front porch ect... You will not regret it. I can have 4 beers drinking, 2 carbing, and 2 buckets cold crashing. It makes managing your pipeline much much easier!

Cheers
JP-

Yes you can bottle like others have stated. I routinely carb my beers warm, you just need to use a higher psi. My pipeline allows me to always have beer carbed and ready to drink in 24hrs (after chilling). However, I wouldn't try to tap the kegs when warm, you'll probably have a foamy mess. When filling bottles from kegs its always better to have cold beer and cold bottles. Keeps the foam down to a minimum.

I bottle from the tap all the time. You don't need perlicks and you don't need any kind of special equipment. I keep CLEAN bottles around and when I need to take some beer to a friends house or send someone home with a couple give aways I just rinse out the already clean bottles with cold water and fill strait from the tap. Leave a tiny bit of water in the bottles after you rinse them. This helps stop the foaming. Also, shut off the gas to your keg prior to bottling and pour yourself a pint first. This lets off some of the pressure which also helps reduce foam. Once you get the hang of it, you can fill a bottle all the way to the top without any foam. Another nice thing about doing this is that you don't have to sanitize the bottles first. As long as they are good and clean and the beer will be consumed fairly quickly, theres no need to sanitize. If you want to store the bottles long term, I would employ your usual sanitizing practices.

I 100% agree with BBL_Brewer. I frequently bottle 3-4 bottles from a keg to take places. I have standard faucets and use .5" ID clear hose (about 8" of it) that slips over the faucet. Not inside, but over. Turn the gas down to just enough to fill at a foamless, but quick, rate and go to town. I do cap on foam (just a bit of foam, .25" or so) and don't sanitize. These bottles will typically be consumed within a few days of filling so other than being clean and rinsed with water, no further precautions are taken. Kyle

Anyone have any issues with the seals? Third day used the adapter when I pulled it out one of the seals split on me??? I follow the instructions and wiggle as I pull in and out an used lube is there a trick to this??

Does this work the same with storing bottles? Can I keg, then bottle and store them for a period of time? Weeks? Months? It seems like most replies/comments I see are people that bottle from the keg to take someplace within a day or two...

mmient said:

Does this work the same with storing bottles? Can I keg, then bottle and store them for a period of time? Weeks? Months? It seems like most replies/comments I see are people that bottle from the keg to take someplace within a day or two...

Click to expand...

You sure can. Just clean/sanitize the bottles, overcarb your keg beer just a tiny bit, and then set the psi to ~4. Carefully fill the bottles and place caps on them. Right before capping, give em a shake to release a little CO2 so the oxygen is pushed out of the headspace, and then cap.

However, if you're really interested in aging a beer for months, I would just bottle it from the get-go. I make a lot of high gravity beers, it's actually all I'm really interested in brewing.

I keep sanitized, sealed, and chilled growlers in the fridge. When I need to bring beer somewhere I just fill from the tap, cap on foam, and go on with life.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/
Check this out. It should answer all questions and show you how.

A spray bottle full of starsan comes in very handy for quickly sanitizing bottles.