Can I transfer kegged beer into bottles w/o beer gun?

Made the first leap into kegging two weeks ago and I am satisfied with 2 of my four kegs. I tried new beer recipes for two of the kegs and both of these beers have way too much foam and don't seem to have much CO2 dissolved into them. I have tried purching the kegs several times and lower the psi to about 8 psi to have enough pressure to move the beer but the results are just underwhelming at this point. I am using 3/16 in lines that are 5 feet long and stainless steel faucets. I tried throughly cleaning the kegs prior to use and replaced all of the gaskets.

I am wondering if I could try racking the beer to my bottling bucket and then bottle the rest of the batch with convetional methods. I imagine I would need to use less corn sugar and perhaps add some yeast. the two kegs I want to possibly transfer have beers that I made for my swmbo and she is not impressed with them so far and thus it may be time to pass these along to my BMC drinking friends.

Anyone have an opinion on if this could work or should I just try to be more patient wit the brew?

Thanks,

mick

What was the serving pressure before you lowered it to 8 psi? Did you crank the PSI and shake your kegs? My vote is that those 2 are overcarbonated, and I think that you would get a ton of foam if you tried to put them into the bottling bucket.

My vote is either be more patient and set the kegs at serving pressure and wait, or use the Bier Muncher bottle filler and fill your bottles that way. However, you shouldn't do this if your beer isn't the correct carbonation level right now.

So....just wait some more.

I tried force carbing the Amber ale with the shake method. The pale ale was more of a set it and forget it. I tried setting these at 14 psi initially and 42 F and this may have been too much prssure so I tried purging the kegs several times this past week in order to reduce the foaming problem. Not sure what to do next to get less foam but more bubbles inside the beer.

I'll try to be more patient with these as i learn how to tweak keg pressures.

How long have they been kegged? it takes a week if you kept it at 15 lbs and didn't shake it. My first 4 Oz is usually foam in a perfectly carbonated beer. Throw it out then its usually prefect. Think it is due to the beer getting warm in the line of the tap tower. I bet you figure out the problem soon. Don't give up the kegs yet, it's your first batch. I serve mine at 12lbs pressure with an epoxy restricter in the Keg dip tube. You have to balance your kegs. Search that on this forum and you will find the issue. Also, are you pulling the tap lever wide open when pouring? If not, thats a good way to get foamy beer.

I had the same problem. I was at a friend's house and watched him pour perfect beer. He chills his kegs and shake carbs at 25 lbs +/- and dispenses at 3 - 4 lbs. Now I do the same thing. No more foam, perfect head.

I put a keg of DFH 60 Clone into my refrigerator at 39F and set it to 25 PSI for 2 1/2 days, shut off the gas, released the pressure in the keg, then set my regulator at 7 - 8 PSI. It is pouring very clear with a nice thick, creamy head and many bubbles rising through the glass.

I have done the shake, shake, shake thing in the past but I am not happy with the results.

Salute!

Shaking the keg is a gamble. Too easy to overcarbonate if you don't know what you are doing. I just leave it at 30lbs for 2 days. 25lbs gives me undercarbed beer. Maybe my regulator is off a bit.

nevermind

You could try making a Biermuncher beer gun to bottle with. It's relatively simple and works very well (use the search tool at the top of the forum to find the thread).

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Appreciate your recmmendations. I got the foam issue under control. Now the beer seems to be carbonated OK but it is lacking in body (ie, it tastes a little thin). I was wondering if there is anyway to try to fix this by either dryhopping or making a hop tea that could be added to the kegged beer.

Any ideas?

If it tastes good just drink it and make your next beer with more body. Sounds like you want a perfect beer off the bat. Surf this website for tips and tweak your beer to be whatever you desire. You sound like me when I started. I switched to All-grain after 3 extract batches to have more control. I suspect you will do the same. Increase the mash temp and you get more body with any grain bill.

Actually I have been doing all grain batches for the last 6 months and this was to be a modified recipe where swmbo wanted a higher ABV% than what i made before when I just bottled the beer. I increased by grain bill to raise the ABV but it appears that I didn't raise the hop IBU level in order to maintain the same SG:IBU ratio as before. this is why I am wondering if I can change the perception of hops by trying to dry hop at this point. I should have included this fact in my initial statement. I use beersmith for most of my calculations but I didn't check hte IBU:ration for this new higher grain bill.

Live, learn and try to brew some more I guess. thanks for the suggestions.