Bottoling Belgians with a Beergun

[butterpants]

So I'm about to give up on force carbing/bottoling Belgian styles that traditionally need 3-4 volumes of CO2. While I can get it done, the losses in foam are too much plus the kept beer is loosing the level high level I want. I've even gone so far as to make up a bucket of ice star san water that all the hardware (gun, coiled hose, etc) is kept in during the process. Still foams a lot. Chilled bottles... still foams a lot. Last week it was 10F outside and I put a golden strong into bottles in the garage.... yep it foamed, excessively.

I would really like to use the beergun to bottle my beer as I find it easy to sterilize and truly believe that I get less oxidation and stailing due to the design and purge features.

Does this sound like an interesting compromise.....?

1) Keg brew per usual but do not force carbonate it.

2) Add an appropriate quantity of priming sugar and if need be, fresh dry yeast for the desired volumes of carbonation.

3) Mix

4) Easily bottle with no foaming via keg/beergun.

5) Wait few weeks.


Sure I'm losing the utility of bottoling fully precarbed beer that's ready to be enjoyed... but the losses of beer and carbonation quality due to excess foaming are worth it. Seems better than a bottoling bucket and wand right?

 

[NeoBrew]

There are certainly some tricks to using the beer gun. I have never tried using it on something so highly carbonated. It did take a few iterations to figure out how to get a reasonably carbonated beer into the bottles. For me the little tricks were freezing the bottles, keeping as much of the tubing inside my keezer while I do the filling, and making sure I purge the pressure in the keg and only use a few pounds of Co2 pressure on the beer while I'm filling.

I would think your proposed method would work just fine. It would certainly minimize the risk of oxidation that a bottling bucket introduces. Plus no messing with the pesky racking cane and gravity feed nonsense.

 

[Culinarytracker]

I'm not really experienced with any of the commercial beer guns, only the BMBF.

That being said, would a counter pressure bottle filler solve a lot of the foaming problems? Seems to me that when I use the BMBF that having equal pressure in the keg and bottles keeps the foam from forming much.

 

[ruger988]

I brew Belgians almost exclusively, usually carb to 3-4 volumes and bottle with beer gun. Keezer is at ~38*, I take the keg out, purge headspace, hook everything up at ~2psi, fill room temp bottles using room temp star san and never have any issues.

How long is your beer line between keg and BG? You purge your headspace right?

 

[butterpants]

lines are fairly long.... 12' I want to say. yep, slow flow, maybe 4 psi.

foam a palooza

 

[captgus]

I brew Belgians almost exclusively, usually carb to 3-4 volumes and bottle with beer gun. Keezer is at ~38*, I take the keg out, purge headspace, hook everything up at ~2psi, fill room temp bottles using room temp star san and never have any issues.

How long is your beer line between keg and BG? You purge your headspace right?

I'm looking to do something similar with a Dark Strong. I was thinking of racking to a keg with my priming solution to naturally carbonate at 3.0 vol. I then plan on allowing it to sit at room temp for a month, before chilling it for a couple of days and then bottle with a counter pressure filler. Is my assumption correct that when you say 'purge your headspace', that you're referring to bleeding the pressure from within the keg, prior to bottling?

Is there anything in the steps I've outlined that could be improved?