Bottling from Keg before its carbonated

[smithchar526]

Has anyone bottled from a keg before you carbonated it? I dont see why I couldnt just skip the bottling bucket by putting the beer in the keg and adding some pressure. I could put the carbonation drops in the bottle and fill from the tap. Anyone see an issue with this.....I am new at this so my knowledge is limited.

The thought is I could just fill as many bottles as I want from the keg and then carbonate the keg.

 

[benbradford]

There are a couple of problems with this, although I like the thinking. I believe that if you were to push from the keg through the tap, you would get foam. This is essentially showing the contact with oxygen. You want as little as possible at this stage. The bottles would be difficult to fill also, as with a bottling wand, you fill from the bottom, not the top like a keg faucet.

What you can do, is use the beer gun.

Look into the threads on the diy version, or you can buy one online.

I have one, and while i have used it 5 times or so, I havn't had results as good as the beer strait off of the tap

 

[smithchar526]

I did forget about the air aspect of it. I was thinking about rigging a tube off of the tap so I could fill from the bottom. Do you think that would minimize the air enough to stop the foam issue?

I could make or get the beer gun. I should be able to do the same plan with the beer gun. If I add the carbonation drops to the bottle and transfer uncarbonated beer then I wouldn't have any issue with the beer not being as carbonated then transferring already carbonated beer.

I know there has to be a good way to make it work but I would assume that if it was a good idea I would see more people doing it. I might just have to play around with it and just see what happens, I can just do a few bottle from a few batches and see how it come out.

 

[Rushis]

I always use a keg and picnic tap to bottle. Add your priming sugar to the keg before racking the beer, just to make sure everything get's mixed in well. Slip an old piece of racking cane into the picnic tap and boom, your filling from the bottom of the bottle.

Foaming has not been an issue for me while dispensing at 8 psi with 4 ft of beer line.

I typically naturally condition the remainder in the keg.

 

[benbradford]

Now we are getting pretty close to a beer gun setup, and it works fine, I am sure.

 

[Dilligans]

Has anyone bottled from a keg before you carbonated it? I dont see why I couldnt just skip the bottling bucket by putting the beer in the keg and adding some pressure. I could put the carbonation drops in the bottle and fill from the tap. Anyone see an issue with this.....I am new at this so my knowledge is limited.

The thought is I could just fill as many bottles as I want from the keg and then carbonate the keg.

I do all the time bottle from a keg. That is what I do when I bottle. because I only bottle about a six pack. I connect a bottle filler to my picnic faucet. I put a coopers carb drop in each 12 oz bottle or 2 for 22 oz and fill her up like usualy the only thing I would suggest is to get some coopers drops. or you could sit and caculate how much corn surgar you need to use. but to answer your question yea why not...on and set psi to about 5 when you are filling bottles. Ps. make sure you fill the bottles before you force carb becasue if you want to fill a bottle with beer all ready carbonated you need a beer gun or counter pressure filler.

 

[Rushis]

Now we are getting pretty close to a beer gun setup, and it works fine, I am sure.

A beer gun, or counter pressure bottle filler, is used to maintain carbonation in a previously carbonated beer. What I (and Dilligans) do is more akin to a bottling wand and bucket than a beer gun. But bottling buckets work great! Using a keg as a bottling bucket, even better!

 

[smithchar526]

Thanks for all the reply's. I will be ready to bottle in a week and using my keg for the first time so it should be fun.

 

[onthekeg]

As stated earlier, I too bottle a few bottles from the keg. I add the priming solution to the keg, and fill it. Then I use a picnic tap with a bottle wand pushed into the tap. Fill the bottles I want filled and let the rest naturally carb up. This has worked well for the little I ever bottle.

 

[smithchar526]

Just in case someone comes across this thread and was wonder how everything turn out I thought I would update.

I end up fermenting in corny kegs, I transferred from Keg to Keg under pressure - gas QD hooked up to the "in" on fermentor, beer QD hooked up to the "out" on the fermentor, a 3ft hose is attached to that beer QD to another beer QD that is going to the Beer "out" on the empty keg (so it will fill from the bottom), then set the pressure relief on the empty keg to be open and turn the CO2 on to about 1lb to 5lb of pressure. You might want to leave the 2nd beer QD off and run a little bit into a bucket to clear out all the junk at the bottom of the keg then hook it up to the empty keg. Be ready to pull the Beer QD off the empty keg once all the beer is out of the fermentor so it doesnt suck up any more junk from the bottom. If your keg lid doesnt have a pressure relief valve on it you can just leave the lid off of the empty keg or remove the gas post.

Now that the beer is in the 2nd keg just hook up gas as normal and use a cheap picnic tap with a standard bottle filler shoved into the end (it fits nice and tight) add a few pounds of pressure and fill bottles with carb drops in it as normal. Fill as many bottles as you want and put the rest in the kegorator. Works great and is very easy. I used a spring loaded bottle filler but either will work and the first time I messed up by not making sure I was at 0 pressure and accidentally used about 15lb of pressure. The filler stayed in place but the end with the spring shot off, lucky it all just went back together and I was only using water to test with otherwise could have been a big mess.

Hope this might help someone, thanks for all the advice I have learned a lot on this site.

 

[diannotti]

I typically naturally condition the remainder in the keg.

How long does that take? Do you keep it unrefrigerated and then refrigerate and add co2 to dispense later?

 

[Rushis]

How long does that take? Do you keep it unrefrigerated and then refrigerate and add co2 to dispense later?

I haven't done any testing, but based on my pipeline, I typically let the keg sit for 3-4 weeks to condition/carb. Bleed the excess CO2, pressurize to serving temps and chill for 1 week prior to serving.