Tapping into bottles (so much foam...)

[GlowingApple]

I've started kegging my beer, and am loving the setup! The only drawback is not being able to bring bottles to friend's places. I can bottle condition a few after brewing, but it would be easier to just be able to tap bottles/growlers right from my keg. I have a carbonator cap (plastic ball-lock socket on one side, threaded cap for soda bottles on the other), so I figured I should be able to tap into a clean and sanitized PET soda bottle and briefly bring up the pressure to cover any CO2 lost while tapping.

The problem I keep running into is that when I tap into the plastic bottles I get foam galore! I can tap pint glasses just fine with little to no head, but every time I tap into a soda bottle it overflows with foam. I seem to get the most foam when starting tapping and stopping tapping and once the foam hits the curves in the bottle it seems to make it worse.

I'm using a picnic faucet (can't afford a nice perlick faucet unfortunately) with a plastic tube over the end to fill to the bottom of the bottle. I chill the plastic bottles before filling. I've tried attaching a bottle filler to the end of the tube but that made it much harder to control filling and still caused a ton of foam. I've tried turning off my CO2 tank before filling and just fill using the head pressure of the tank. Nothing seems to make any difference.

Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong?

 

[pigroaster]

purge CO2 from keg. Set regulator to 2 psi. Rinse bottle in cold water. Fill bottle. Should be only 1/4 inch foam. Screw on lid. If beer is the right carb level in the keg you should be good to go. Screw cap on in the foam!

 

[NeoBrew]

Seems like you have tried some of the obvious stuff. You might try bleeding the CO2 pressure out of your keg and then filling with the bare minimum of pressure to just push the beer out. Also, make sure the path for the beer is as even as possible. If you are shoving a vinyl tube over the end of the tap you are likely creating a wider diameter which lets the gas out of solution. You might try shoving the bottling wand without the valve at the end into the tap. The next step up would be to add a drilled rubber stopper to the tube which will seal off the bottle and create a counter pressure filler. This is how I filled bottles for some time before I finally bit the bullet and bought a beer gun.

This thread might help you.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/