Kegging equipment only for bottling? (Closed system bottling with force carbonation)

[Tpys]

Hi all,

I'd like to ask your advice on possible future investments.

TL;DR: I'm planning on closed system bottling with force carbonation. Is this a good idea or waste of time and money?

I'll give you a little bit of background. I live in an apartment where I simply cannot keep my equipment. I only have equipment that I can carry to attic for storage after brewing, only bottles remain in the apartment. To put it simply - I'm fine getting new equipment that I can carry away after brewing. But it's a definitive no for keezer, kegerator etc. It has to be bottles, so I can stack a few in my kitchen refrigerator. I brew AG with Grainfather, I have SS fermenter (not pressurized), a Ferminator for temperature control etc.

I prefer very low alc beers (I consider 2-3% ABV to be a good middle ground but for some styles I think 4% is minimum). I try to minimize alcohol content in multiple different ways. Bottle conditioning introduces an extra 0.2-0.4% ABV alcohol, so that is quite a big portion in my beers.

I also tend to brew more than I drink and I might have bottles from brews ages ago, and therefore long shelf life is very important to me. I have limited oxygen contact: I rack from fermenter, use bottling wand, minimize headspace and use oxygen absorbing caps and ascorbic acid etc. I have not purged the bottle headspace. I'm not getting any off-flavors that I could identify with this setup - beers are good, but hoppy beers of course lose their oomph after a while.

Recently I have considered getting kegging equipment and an iTap only for the purpose of force carbonating my beer in a keg and bottling afterwards, keeping the system "closed" at all points. Almost identical to Closed system bottling, but force carbonating the beer first in the keg which would be in the Ferminator in low temp until bottling.

I believe this would introduce the following advantages:

• Less oxygen contact and therefore longer shelf life and better suitability for bottling NEIPAs etc
• Less yeast and trub in the bottle
  • Clearer looking beers
  • I think I could keep them lying on their side in my refrigerator - a huge perk for my daily kitchen life
  • More "portable" beer bottles that could be consumed immediately after travelling?
• Lower alcohol content (down by 0.2-0.4% ABV i.e. 10% in my low-alc beers)

The disadvantages that I can think of are:

• Doing all the work for both kegging AND bottling
  • Bottling a 5 gallon batch with this system might be a long and exhaustive task
• More stuff to carry to the attic

Do you think this idea is silly, or could this achieve those advantages I listed? Is anybody doing or considering the same? Any other thoughts?

 

[doug293cz]

Do you have a way to chill the keg? Bottling warm, carbonated beer will be a foaming nightmare.

Brew on

 

[Tpys]

Do you have a way to chill the keg? Bottling warm, carbonated beer will be a foaming nightmare.

Brew on

Thx for quick answer!

Yes, I was planning to use my Ferminator for this. It can cool my fermenter to about 3 C (38F), same should be true for a keg.

The bottles wouldn't be cool though.

A little bit of foam could be even useful, I think. That way headspace would be mostly co2 bubbles and I could cap on foam.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I started to type about the challenges of carbonating room temp beer, but if you can chill it.

Does your Ferminator have room for a keg and a CO2 tank? Or a way to run a CO2 line to the keg. You can burst carbonate a keg in a day or two using high pressure (or give it a week or so at typical serving pressure). You need to keep the CO2 tank connected to push more CO2 into solution as it is absorbed.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Bottle conditioning introduces an extra 0.2-0.4% ABV alcohol, so that is quite a big portion in my beers.

Note, when I saw some calculations, I was surprised by how much a little water countered the additional ABV boost by the sugar. I don't have the calculations, but I suspect you could just use an extra cup or two of water to zero out the ABV addition. I add this mostly because I have heard of people that do a closed transfer to a keg, then bottle flat beer (with sugar added) using a beer gun into CO2 purged bottles.

 

[Tpys]

Thanks for the thoughts! The Ferminator can hold 3-4 kegs, so there should be enough space. The Ferminator I'm talking about:
Ferminator Basic - Get Er Brewed. I have 2 expansion modules.

Burst carbonating is what I thought I'd do.

Note, when I saw some calculations, I was surprised by how much a little water countered the additional ABV boost by the sugar. I don't have the calculations, but I suspect you could just use an extra cup or two of water to zero out the ABV addition. I add this mostly because I have heard of people that do a closed transfer to a keg, then bottle flat beer (with sugar added) using a beer gun into CO2 purged bottles.

I believe you are correct. I actually sometimes use spray malt to make an unhopped wort/gyle of the same gravity as the original brew, and use that for priming. This kind of priming shouldn't change the ABV, and doesn't dilute the beer like water.

I have also been thinking about freezing a little bit of the original wort to be used for this. I believe the priming has more effect on low alc beers, which is why I have been optimizing this process

 

[Tpys]

I add this mostly because I have heard of people that do a closed transfer to a keg, then bottle flat beer (with sugar added) using a beer gun into CO2 purged bottles.

Ok! This is similar to what I've been planning sans the carbonation part. I'd like hear if this has helped them with limiting oxidation.

I also wonder what keeps them bottle conditioning even when they are already using co2, beergun etc.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I also wonder what keeps them bottle conditioning even when they are already using co2, beergun etc.

It seems like a lot of extra equipment for little improvement, but the thing that keeps most people from being able to keg beers is lack of a way to cool and serve the beer. I am sure the same could be said for somebody that would transfer, chill, and carbonate in a keg...just to transfer that into bottles. I am not sure there is a massive benefit to force carbonating and bottling from a keg vs bottle conditioning (either from a keg or from the fermenter/bottling bucket).

 

[Beermeister32]

If you are going to have bottles in storage unrefrigerated in a cool dark place, you would be better off bottle conditioning those beers.

Once you begin force carbonating beers, some will have very low yeast levels. These beers store better in a refrigerator.

 

[Tpys]

If you are going to have bottles in storage unrefrigerated in a cool dark place, you would be better off bottle conditioning those beers.

Once you begin force carbonating beers, some will have very low yeast levels. These beers store better in a refrigerator.

Ok, never thought of that! This is exactly the kind of input I was hoping for before making any investments. Thanks!

I thought the proposed bottling method would store better because of the "closed system", but this would indeed change that!

Do you know why bottles stored unrefrigerated store better with yeast than without?

With a little bit of googling I found a few articles saying the same. Unfortunately I didn't find a reason for this phenomenon. Only some speculations mostly about the yeast eating the oxygen, which seems to be true only for the presolved oxygen, not the headspace oxygen.

 

[Beermeister32]

Having a bit of yeast there keeps the beer in good condition, it cleans up residual 02 and other issues. I'm not a bio chemist, there are a lot of chemical things going on as it is a live product.

I bottle condition, force carb and keg. They all have their good points;

Bottle conditioning - Good for putting up batches you want to age out or ones that you will only brew infrequently. Also good for IPA's. Yeast scavange 02. Old school method, this was how it was done for hundreds of years.

Force carbing - great for making bottles that have clean beer all the way to the bottom (I use 500 ml flip tops, makes bottling easier.) You can drive off 02 by capping on C02 foam. Once in a while you shoot beer all over your kitchen, so make a "filling station" with cardboard and towels. I generally refrigerate these.

Kegging - Super great for pulling 16 oz clean beers without sediment. You can fine with gelatin making the beer clarity "crystal clear." No cleaning up or storing huge quantities of bottles (storing bottles - the dirty secret nobody talks about). Keg cleaning and disassembly/reassembly not for everyone.

You need all 3 !!!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I bottle condition, force carb and keg. They all have their good points;

I agree.

My primary use of bottle conditioning lately has been 1) to support higher carbonation of Belgian beers, as my kegging setup only supports one pressure for all kegs, and I would need different lines to dispense higher carbonated beers and 2) small batches where I cannot justify the cost of small kegs.

I want to get better about bottling high ABV beers to keep them around longer. I have not figured out if filling bottles off a keg or bottle conditioning is my best bet here.

My biggest issue with bottle conditioned beers is the issue with the yeast layer. If I take a cooler full of them to a gathering, they will likely be a bit cloudy. If I am pouring small samples at a club meeting, the samples get more and more cloudy and yeasty (even with careful pouring and limiting sediment into the bottles).

I know that some commercial breweries add a little bit of yeast a packaging. I would not be surprise if most homebrew beers (even after being in a keg for a month) still have enough yeast to help with storage.

 

[Tpys]

I bottle condition, force carb and keg. They all have their good points;

Bottle conditioning - Good for putting up batches you want to age out or ones that you will only brew infrequently. Also good for IPA's. Yeast scavange 02. Old school method, this was how it was done for hundreds of years.

Force carbing - great for making bottles that have clean beer all the way to the bottom (I use 500 ml flip tops, makes bottling easier.) You can drive off 02 by capping on C02 foam. Once in a while you shoot beer all over your kitchen, so make a "filling station" with cardboard and towels. I generally refrigerate these.

Kegging - Super great for pulling 16 oz clean beers without sediment. You can fine with gelatin making the beer clarity "crystal clear." No cleaning up or storing huge quantities of bottles (storing bottles - the dirty secret nobody talks about). Keg cleaning and disassembly/reassembly not for everyone.

Nice! I totally see your point!

After reading your post, I might end up doing all 3 methods - except for kegging would be limited to hosting a party or some other special occasion, as I don't want to keep the stuff in our apartment all the time.

My biggest issue with bottle conditioned beers is the issue with the yeast layer. If I take a cooler full of them to a gathering, they will likely be a bit cloudy. If I am pouring small samples at a club meeting, the samples get more and more cloudy and yeasty (even with careful pouring and limiting sediment into the bottles).

I feel you. I share quite a big portion of my brews in bottles to friends and family, and it's sad to see how cloudy they sometimes are after a little travel. I always worry about the last bits of the bottle when pouring small samples to multiple glasses. This is one of the reasons I'm considering this new system.

I know that some commercial breweries add a little bit of yeast a packaging. I would not be surprise if most homebrew beers (even after being in a keg for a month) still have enough yeast to help with storage.

Based on what I've read I'm quite sure there's damn lot of yeast left in the beer 90% of the time even when it is invisible to eye.

I believe the major difference of bottle conditioning vs force carbonation bottling would come in yeast metabolism. The yeast tries to achieve 2 things: surviving and reproducing. Any kind of major metabolism requires energy i.e. consumable sugars. Without consumable sugars the yeast won't be doing much, and any kind of metabolism should be extremely slow - including O2 scavenging. If O2 is present, yeast consumes sugar to create energy with aerobic respiration converting sugar and O2 to H2O and CO2. If O2 is not available, yeast uses much more inefficient anaerobic fermentation converting sugar to CO2 and ethanol. If no sugar is present, neither can happen, and a major O2 scavenging reaction is not happening at all.

Of course in reality multiple other reactions are going on as well (for example protein and lipid metabolism), but those are pretty damn slow without the energy source driving yeast to reproduce. Therefore force carbonated bottles would have a lot less metabolism going on even if they have some yeast cells in them.

Maybe the commercial breweries you are referring to add both yeast and a little bit of sugar even when force carbonating (This one I just threw out of my head).

I'd be very interested to hear if somebody had information what makes (if true) naturally carbonated bottles to store better than force carbonated bottles (not talking about aging/cellaring). This would make a major consideration to my future investments!

 

[UdonPete]

After fermentation has finished (under pressure) why not add the carbonating sugar to the fermenter (can be done under pressure so no CO2 is lost) and then bottle at once using (say) an iTap?

 

[Tpys]

After fermentation has finished (under pressure) why not add the carbonating sugar to the fermenter (can be done under pressure so no CO2 is lost) and then bottle at once using (say) an iTap?

Interesting idea.

Unfortunately adding the carbonating sugar eliminates the idea behind this - having less alcohol and less yeast in the bottle. If I used pressurized fermentation this might work.

 

[Tpys]

I bought this equipment.

One extra reason was that I realized I could also make home-made sparkling lemonade out of fruits, and clone a few of my favorite sparkling waters (San Pellegrino etc) with this equpment.

I also tried making lemonade using lemons, sugar and water and carbonating it in a keg (after a quick boil and chill). It was SO good! Bottling was super easy even in room temperature using iTap, very little foam. Next time I'll try optimizing the mineral levels for the added water.

I also kegged the 3.0% ABV NEIPA I had already fermenting, and bottled a few bottles using my previous method for comparison. I'll bottle the kegged beer soon. I'll check later if they have developed any difference.

Thanks to everyone for answers!

 

[PeterG]

I bought this equipment.

One extra reason was that I realized I could also make home-made sparkling lemonade out of fruits, and clone a few of my favorite sparkling waters (San Pellegrino etc) with this equpment.

I also tried making lemonade using lemons, sugar and water and carbonating it in a keg (after a quick boil and chill). It was SO good! Bottling was super easy even in room temperature using iTap, very little foam. Next time I'll try optimizing the mineral levels for the added water.

I also kegged the 3.0% ABV NEIPA I had already fermenting, and bottled a few bottles using my previous method for comparison. I'll bottle the kegged beer soon. I'll check later if they have developed any difference.

Thanks to everyone for answers!

Just came across this thread while searching on this topic. Can you share what specifically you ended up purchasing for your setup?