Keg to Bottle Back to Keg?

[bowlersp]

So I tried to rush some beer from keg to bottle and it didn't work out too well. The beer was not very carbonated at all. I am not really looking for advice on how to keep it carbed from keg to bottle rather I wanted to ask is it possible to just pop all the caps off the beer (about 6 bottles) and add it back to the original keg and force carbonate them again.

I am guessing the process would look like the following:

1) pop off caps from bottles
2) purge out all o2 from keg
3) pop top off keg and add flat beer
4) put top back on keg and force carb beer

Thanks!

 

[hottpeper13]

You might be better off using those carbonation caps. or do the sugar cube thing. I wouldn't transfer once in the bottle.

 

[mongoose33]

If the bottled beer isn't very good, not much choice, is there?

Does the original keg still have beer in it? If so, why would you be purging O2 from it? That should have happened initially, right?

Assuming you do have beer in a keg, what I'd do is first, pop the lid, leaving it in place. I'd run gas into that keg at about 1-2 psi through the IN post, just to create a positive pressure. Pop the cap off a bottle, slowly pour back into keg, keep the gas going, second bottle, third, and so on.

If you don't have a partially filled keg, you could still do it. To purge that keg, I'd use a star-san purge, i.e., fill the keg with star san, then purge the headspace (much, MUCH smaller volume than an entire keg), then using CO2 push that out into either another keg or even a 5-gallon bucket. That leaves you with a keg far better purged of O2.

Good luck!

 

[bowlersp]

I actually have 2 kegs with the beer in it, a 5 gallon keg (pretty much empty) and a 2 gallon keg (maybe 1 gallon in it). So maybe I should just fill the smaller keg back up:

1) pop lid of 2 gallon keg
2) pop caps off bottles
3) fill 2 gallon keg with bottled beer
4) put lid back on 2 gallon keg
5) force carbonate 2 gallon keg like normal

Maybe I just needed to walk myself through the steps

 

[Thunderverb]

If it's just six bottles I wouldn't care. The cap popping and pouring back is just asking for infection. Drinking it flatt-ish just makes it feel more British [emoji6]

 

[Auger]

I did this with a wee heavy that I tried bottle conditioning in 1L flip-top bottles. Turned out the gaskets were bad and all the bottles were flat. I purged a sanitized keg with CO2, and dumped the bottles into the keg, trying to keep the mouth and neck of the bottles inside the keg to prevent O2 exposure as much as possible. After the beer carbonated in the keg, I bottled into 12oz crown cap bottles. The beer turned out fine.

 

[PsychoBiter]

I have gone back and dosed bottles that didn't carb with a solution of yeast and priming sugar and re-capped. I dipped the bottles in star san, pulled, un capped, dosed with a dropper and recapped. Worked like a charm.
In the solution I measured the correct amount of priming sugar form my volume and I used rehydrated dry yeast as it was easier to get the right amount for me. Mixed them together and dosed with a dropper that had ml measurements.

 

[Sadu]

I have done this before with PET bottles. Ultimately the beer got oxidised from being transferred too many times. to be fair, I just poured the beer into the keg rather than racking it so this didn't help.

My suggestion is to do it - but rack the bottles using a siphon and drink the keg quick as you can.

Better yet transfer the bottles to a PET bottle on the day you want to drink them and use a carbonation cap to recarbonate just before drinking. This way you aren't introducing any oxidation problems.