Kegs for Bottlers

[Epos7]

Despite my best efforts, I have a very hard time preserving hops flavors and aromas in my bottled beers. I don't have room for a kegerator, or I'd likely have one already. I do have room for a 5 gallon keg and a CO2 tank.

Does it make sense to use a keg as a bottling bucket? It seems like I could sanitize the keg and purge with CO2, add priming sugar, then use CO2 to push the beer from the fermenter into the keg. Could I then bottle from the keg with a beer gun or something similar, effectively eliminating any oxygen that's being introduced during the bottling process?

I imagine I will eventually have room for a kegerator, and I'd already have a keg and CO2 tank.

 

[microbusbrewery]

I bottle off my kegs for competitions and/or when I'm tired of a beer I have on tap. It works well, but one problem I see in your case is if you can't chill the keg, you're going to have major foaming issues. So you'll lose a lot of beer to foam, will probably have tons of low fills, and they'll be undercarbed when you go to drink them because of the loss of CO2 due to foaming issues. You might be able to remedy it with extra long lines and/or a counter pressure type filler, but I still suspect you're going to run into problems.

 

[OddBrew]

I've tried thinking this through in my head as well. I think the key to a foaming issue is to not let the beer carbonate in the keg; i.e. Epos7 still mentions adding the priming sugar. So in this case, the CO2 is only used for purging oxygen and moving the beer from fermenter to keg and then keg to bottle.

Does this make sense?

 

[schatzke]

As I understand you are just wanting to use the keg as a bottling bucket for now and still bottle conditioning to carbonate. I think this would work just fine, giving you the ability to remove as much oxygen as possible. You won't need a beer gun because your beer wont be carbonated yet. Just a faucet on a ball lock fitting should do the trick
https://www.morebeer.com/products/faucet-quick-disconnect-assembly.html
Then just a piece of tubing off the faucet long enough to reach the bottom of your bottles and you should be in business.

 

[Epos7]

I've tried thinking this through in my head as well. I think the key to a foaming issue is to not let the beer carbonate in the keg; i.e. Epos7 still mentions adding the priming sugar. So in this case, the CO2 is only used for purging oxygen and moving the beer from fermenter to keg and then keg to bottle.

Does this make sense?

Yup that's exactly what I'm trying to describe

 

[Epos7]

As I understand you are just wanting to use the keg as a bottling bucket for now and still bottle conditioning to carbonate. I think this would work just fine, giving you the ability to remove as much oxygen as possible. You won't need a beer gun because your beer wont be carbonated yet. Just a faucet on a ball lock fitting should do the trick
https://www.morebeer.com/products/faucet-quick-disconnect-assembly.html
Then just a piece of tubing off the faucet long enough to reach the bottom of your bottles and you should be in business.

Awesome, good to know. I was thinking I could use the beer gun to purge the bottles with CO2 and fill, or would that not be possible?

 

[schatzke]

Awesome, good to know. I was thinking I could use the beer gun to purge the bottles with CO2 and fill, or would that not be possible?

I didn't think about that, you are correct.

 

[Dr_Jeff]

Awesome, good to know. I was thinking I could use the beer gun to purge the bottles with CO2 and fill, or would that not be possible?

No need to purge the bottles with CO2, as the yeast & priming sugar will scavenge the O2 from the bottle during the carbonation process.

 

[microbusbrewery]

Yup that's exactly what I'm trying to describe

Sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, if you aren't force carbing, you shouldn't have any more foam than you would with a regular bottling bucket.

 

[shelly_belly]

A keg makes a great bottling bucket. Use a cheap bottling wand for easy on/off beer flow.

 

[mongoose33]

I bottle off my kegs for competitions and/or when I'm tired of a beer I have on tap. It works well, but one problem I see in your case is if you can't chill the keg, you're going to have major foaming issues. So you'll lose a lot of beer to foam, will probably have tons of low fills, and they'll be undercarbed when you go to drink them because of the loss of CO2 due to foaming issues. You might be able to remedy it with extra long lines and/or a counter pressure type filler, but I still suspect you're going to run into problems.

I'm not sure that will happen--he just proposes to use the keg as a bottling bucket, not for force carbing. The beer will be warm, the bottles will be warm, and there will be no carbonation in the beer.

If foaming would ensue, it'd ensue using a bottling bucket too. Since he's proposing using priming sugar, the beer isn't carbed yet, so he's just pushing it out of the keg into the bottle using a little pressure.

Here's a pic showing how I rack from fermenter into keg; I fill the keg w/ Star-San, then use CO2 to push that Star-San into another keg (you could use a 5-gallon bucket too). I purge the headspace several times before I do that, so I'm as close to having pure CO2 in the keg as I can get. Then I rack the beer directly into the OUT post of the keg, and return the displaced CO2 coming out of the IN post back into the fermenter.

The tubing I had would fit only a cut-down airlock; not necessary to use that if you have some other way to connect the CO2 line to the fermenter.