Corny Keg Pouring Hack on the Cheap!

[rmleer]

I discovered a hack that enables you to slowly poor beer from your corny keg/picnic tap at a slower rate to fill growlers/bottles without having to purge the keg to lower your psi from CO2.

I came up with this technique after learning about the Perlick 650 that allows you to control the flow rate right off of the faucet while maintaining a higher psi.

The Perlick would be good for continuous pours from a kegerator or keezer. I often fill my beer from my kegerator with attached picnic taps so a roughly $80 investment per tap doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I found that using a cheap "C" clamp from a hardware store works just as well for me on a basically free cost because I have some of them lying around the house.

What I do is, with my keezer open I clamp the liquid tubing about 3 inches away from the poppet attached to the keg to the point that I know there is no flow. I will slowly loosen the clamp until it is flowing at the desired speed!

I used this technique to fill a couple batches of bottles for a local homebrew competition and I got minimum spilling and foaming. I actually got a silver in the competition so there must not have been any carbonation issues.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

 

[LJvermonster]

This doesn't cause a lot of bubbles?? Seems too easy!

 

[JohnSand]

Thanks for the tip. I may try it, as I have many C-clamps. My only worry would be damaging the beer line over time.

 

[rmleer]

This doesn't cause a lot of bubbles?? Seems too easy!

I haven't had any issues with bubbling. I only suggested clamping towards the start of the line so it gives the beer a chance to re-settle in the line before dispensing. I also let a little bit run at first for a second so the line gets purged of CO2 filled beer.

I've only done it a handful of times but seems to work alright.

 

[jddevinn]

What I do to restrict the flow:

• small cut from a section of racking cane
• .152"ID 1/4" OD 316SS Seamless Tubing from Amazon
• #2 stopper with a drilled hole. (for a bottle) not sure of the growler stopper size.

• Use the piece of the racking cane to fit the SS Tube to the picnic tap.
• Drill a hole for the tube in the stopper (in the image the stopper I had was too big so I added another piece of racking cane).
• Drill another small hole for air relief.
• Position in the bottle or growler so that the stopper is in the opening and the tube is very close to the bottom.
• Fill, the small tube diameter creates a restriction and lowers the flow rate.
• air will be pushed out of the small opening in the stopper
• Cap on foam

 

[mona]

I like the idea of not having to turn down the pressure to the entire system but since I am at the task of filling bottles or growlers I just turn down the CO2 tank to around 2psi, open the relief valve for the keg I am filling from and go about my business. When done I just turn the pressure back up and off I go. Oh and always cap on foam.

 

[Islandboy85]

Another thing that helps I've found is to freeze the growler. It always foams more for me when I use a room temperature growler.