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Bottling beer from a keg

Northern Brewer General
#1

Hi All -

I’ve recently bought some bottles, caps and a capper with the intention of bottling some beer for friends. The thing is - I keg my beer and force carb it. This works well, obviously, when giving samples from the keg.

The feedback I’ve gotten from my friends is the beer is great…but it was flat when they opened the bottles.

Any suggestions for doing this and retaining more carbonation?

What I’ve done so far is just use a cheap bottle filler, and fill it directly from the keg in a few steps - fill until foam reaches top, wait, fill more, wait, fill more…

Is there a better way???

Thanks,

Alan

#2

I’ve had good luck by doing two things:

  1. Put the bottles in the freezer for a while first. Cold glass = less foam = more CO2 staying in the beer.

  2. Use a bottling wand. Same thing here - if you fill from the bottom, the beer gets agitated less so you get less CO2 getting knocked out of suspension. In my case, the tubing for my bottling wand fits nicely over my taps so I don’t even need to do anything special to use it.

Others use counterpressure fillers. I’m sure they’re nice to have, but I’ve had good enough luck with the above that I just haven’t felt the need to spend the money.

#3

I use same process with a bottling wand and a tubing that fits over the cobra tap.
Also turn the CO2 off and bleed a little pressure from the keg with the pressure relief valve. I have a little less foam this way with a slower fill into the bottle or growler.

#4

Put a pan under the bottle and fill it until it just overflows (beer, not foam), then remove the wand, leaving a little headspace, and cap just as the foam reaches the lip.

#5

Here’s what I use:

The key is to drop your serving pressure down to about 2-3 psi. Purge the excess CO2 from your keg. Then fill slowly and yes, keep going until beer reaches the rubber stopper. Foam will come out around the stopper as the beer gets up there. Quick, cap that mother! Works pretty well for me. :cheers:

#6

I do this.^^^
Fill with the bottle in a caserole dish. Keep pushing beer until the foam is out of the bottle, then cap immediately.

#7

Here are two youtube videos I made to show how I do it. Both work great. One is for when I want to do cases full of bottles. The other is for when I need a few for friends or competitions. I have won many awards with my beer bottled straight from the tap.

In the second video, I should mention that I have ice cubes and Iodophor solution in the blue bucket to minimize foaming (keeps bottle cold).

Mullerbrau bottling straight from tap

Bottling from picnic tap

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