Force carb in keg, then bottle some for swapping ... Or bottle condition 10 or so from the batch?

[MajorJC]

I'm getting ready to transfer my latest brew to the keg. For beer swapping purposes, should I drop a tsp (~1.6 gram) corn sugar into each of my bottles and bottle them first, then transfer remainder to keg for force carbonation, or should I do the force carbonation of the total batch and then use a bottle filler on a tap to fill and cap some bottles?

 

[Broken Crow]

You 'should' do whatever you're most comfortable doing. Personally, I'd carb it all in the keg then bottle just to avoid passing around bottles with sediment. I love my beergun for filling, a lot of people have an easy time with counter pressure fillers... Do you have a method already for bottling from a keg?

 

[MajorJC]

Do you have a method already for bottling from a keg?

I think I've got one of those growler filler tubes in a box somewhere. I'll have to see if I can find it. It's been a while since I bottled any beer ... In fact ... I'm gonna have to go dig around in the garage to find my capper also.

 

[Broken Crow]

I know plenty of folk use those and are happy with the result, and I see you've been on here since 2014 so rather than ignite a 2-3 page debate about O2 exposure, I'll just leave it here that I'm sure you'll consider that and make a choice you're comfortable with.

 

[Dland]

When I bottle a few bottles or growlers for gift or transport out of kegs, I just use a picknick tap with a foot or so of silicon tubing stuck on spout to reach to bottom of bottle without splashing. Works good with beer gun too, but that needs thicker tubing.

I find if I fill to the point that a little foam overflows and cap quickly, it does a pretty good job of avoiding oxidation.

 

[redrocker652002]

I have been thinking the same thing about bottling a few and kegging the rest. For me, I only have the bottle filler I got with my kit, so I would bottle a few, then hook up my gravity feed tube on my bucket and gravity feed the rest into my keg. Funny that this question has come up, as I was just thinking of how I was going to do just what you asked. Great question.

 

[jerrylotto]

Usually put priming sugar in the cleaned and sanitized keg before I purge it with CO2. Then, after I fill it I, pressurize just to 5 lb or so and give the sugar time to dissolve. Then I bottle the primed beer directly from the keg at low pressure. The only downside to this method is that I have to leave the keg at fermentation temperature for several more days to naturally carbonate, but I generally a full keezee anyway and I have to finish something before there's room for another keg.

 

[MajorJC]

Usually put priming sugar in the cleaned and sanitized keg before I purge it with CO2. Then, after I fill it I, pressurize just to 5 lb or so and give the sugar time to dissolve. Then I bottle the primed beer directly from the keg at low pressure.

Perfect solution for me! It never occurred to me to use a keg as a bottling bucket. Even better than a bottling bucket, because I can purge the atmospheric air out through the relief valve and bottle under pressure. After bottling a few bottles and then waiting a few more days in the fermentation fridge I can just drop it into the keezer.

I thought I was going to be bottling today, however, I pulled a sample to check the gravity and after degassing it's only down to 1.020. I bumped up the temp in my fermenting chamber to the top of the ideal range for my yeast and I'll check it again next week. The recipe says it should finish at 1.010 to 1.014, OG was 1.050.

 

[jerrylotto]

Dissolve the priming sugar in a small amount of boiled water and add the syrup to the kegS

PS - final gravity in a recipe is only a suggestion. If it doesn't change over the course of 3 days it's done.