Best way to bottle a few beers before kegging rest of batch?

[surfingpl]

I am going to start kegging some of my beer, but I would like to bottle a few (maybe about 12 beers) of every batch to stash away. I was thinking of bottling some at the same time I rack to the keg, not sure if this is the best way? I was thinking of racking a small amount of beer from the fermenter into the bottling bucket. I would just try to get as close to racking one gallon, for instance, as I can. Then I would add 1/5 of the usual amount of priming sugar to the bottling bucket. Then, of course, I would bottle that beer and have about a twelve pack to stash. Then I could take the remaining 4 gallons left in the carboy and rack that straight into the keg and force-carb that.

Does this sound like a good way to accomplish my goal? Do you guys have any other suggestions or techniques for doing this? Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

Well, I think I would try to skip a couple of steps here. With only one gallon going into the bottle bucket, that sounds like a pain.

I would either:

Prime the entire batch in the bottling bucket, bottle as many as I wanted, then fill the keg with the remainder. Keep bottles and keg at room temperature until carbed, then chill and serve. You can prime the keg, no problem. You'd have a little more sediment, but not much.

OR

Force carb the whole batch. When carbed, bottle however many you wanted. See the "We don't need no stinking beer gun" thread if you don't have a counterpressure bottle filler or a beer gun.

OR

Siphon to the keg, but have the bottles ready. Fill the bottles first and use carb tabs for those. Then fill the keg with the remaining beer and force carb.

 

[surfingpl]

Cool, I learned something new! I had never heard of those carb-tabs before. I think that might be a good way to do it.

If the beer is in the carboy up on the counter - can I start a siphon using an auto siphon, or the sterile siphon starter and just put a bottling wand on the end of the siphon hose and bottle right out of the carboy? Do I risk the siphon getting stuck or bubbles or anything like that? I have only bottled from the bucket before.

 

[surfingpl]

Sweet, thanks for the ideas.

 

[PeteOz77]

Siphon to the keg, but have the bottles ready. Fill the bottles first and use carb tabs for those. Then fill the keg with the remaining beer and force carb.

That's what I do.. every batch! I don't necessarily do it to keep seperate bottles, unless I think they are going to something really special that I want to give out or take places, I do it because my batches are always too big to fit into a keg... at least 6-8 750ml bottles extra in every batch.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Siphon to the keg, but have the bottles ready. Fill the bottles first and use carb tabs for those. Then fill the keg with the remaining beer and force carb.

+1.
I've done it that way a lot. Another option would be a beer gun or Biermucher's Bottle Filler. Either way will work well.

 

[VanHolton]

I want to try this because I have 6+ gallons in my fermenter now. Do you attach a bottling wand straight to your siphon, or how do you stop and start the flow? I'm dealing with an auto siphon, mind you. Not sure my bottling wand will fit on my siphon hose. Thanks in advance!

 

[wbown]

I usually brew a 6 gallon batch and fill the keg first and stop the siphon on my auto siphon after the keg is full. I calculate the DME needed to carb one gallon, boil it, cool it and add to the remaining gallon. I attach the bottling wand to the end of the hose and restart the auto siphon and just bottle from there. Probably the trickiest part is keeping the end of the bottling wand depressed to allow for airflow while restarting the autosiphon.

 

[VanHolton]

This turned into a debacle for me. I was fermenting in a bucket, and turns out I had about a gallon of trub. I didn't even need to bottle any, as I could've fit it all in the keg. Dammit!! Anyway, I bottled twelve beers first, and managed to oxygenate the first one pretty severely trying to restart the siphon. Then, when I needed to move the hose over to the keg, I pulled off the bottling wand while trying to pinch the siphon tube closed, only to end up spraying beer into my keg until I could get the end of the tube to the bottom of the keg. Geez Louise. At least I can say I learned something... or did I?

At the very least, it makes a good argument for more carboys!!

 

[DirtyPolock]

Siphon to the keg, but have the bottles ready. Fill the bottles first and use carb tabs for those. Then fill the keg with the remaining beer and force carb.

I have done a modified verson of this.

My first batch I added the priming sugar into the keg then racked the beer into the keg. From there I used a bottle filler on the end of a siphon and bottled a six pack from the keg. This worked great for me and I did not have any oxidation problems.

My second batch (I haven't tasted this yet), was essentiall following yoop's suggestion except for filling te keg first then the bottles from the keg which had some carb tabs in there.

 

[d_ozz68]

My last couple batches I've racked the entire batch into my bottling bucket. I then place carb tabs into 12 bottles and use my bottling wand to fill the bottles. I then unhook the bottling wand and hook up my normal racking tube to rack the rest into my keg and then force carb the keg.

So far this process seems to work pretty good for me...

 

[smellysell]

I just rack it all into the keg and then stick my bottling wand into the picnic tap, and bottle as many as I want at as low of a psi as I can set the regulator using carb drops. Then I turn the psi back up and force carb the keg.