I’m force carbonating my beer and bottling from my keg for the first time. I’ll be using a picnic faucet with a bottle filler with the tip cut at an angle. I’ve seen a few videos of the same set up, but with the addition of a #2 rubber stopper plugging the bottle opening.
My question: Is the rubber stopper a necessity for bottle filling directly from a keg?
Also, I plan on force carbonating with 35-40 psi for 2-3 days and lowering to 2-3 psi for filling.
I appreciate any advice.
No it’s not, but it can help to reduce foaming. You can also use one that’s too big and just hold it over the opening…
That’s right. For any transfer, you’ll want each vessel to be ALMOST the same temperature and pressure. (Pre-freezing your bottles helps too) If they’re exactly the same pressure, however, the beer won’t move, The stopper helps to hold some of the pressure in the bottle, but then you release the pressure just enough to keep the flow going.
Along the same lines, if you’re doing a keg-to-keg tansfer, it’s best to have a bit of pressure in the receiving keg, releasing pressure every now and then to take make sure there’s enough pressure differential to keep the beer moving.
To minimize foam, I get my bottles good and cold by soaking in Iodophor and cold water. Take them out as you need them. It works really good without a rubber stopper. This time of year, my tap water is in the 40’s but in the summer, I add a few ice cubes to the sanitizer solution.
Use a bottling wand jammed into the Cobra tap and a little black tape to make sure no air leaks around it. You will see no foam at all.
Thanks for the advice!
I’m stoked to cut my waiting time from 2 weeks to 2-3 days!
Muller-great tips on the icy iodaphor.
I know it makes sense to use what you have…but just wanted to point out that I got better results NOT using a bottling wand with the automatic stopper on the end. I found than an old piece of racking cane – without the black gravity tip or springloaded tip on the end – worked better in that it did not provide a final piece of agitation. Also, if I wanted to fill my bottles mostly full, the open-ended cane allowed for this, whereas a springloaded bottle filler did not. Less headspace= less carbonation coming out of solution.
[quote=“FriendsR2Thirsty”]Muller-great tips on the icy iodaphor.
I know it makes sense to use what you have…but just wanted to point out that I got better results NOT using a bottling wand with the automatic stopper on the end. I found than an old piece of racking cane – without the black gravity tip or springloaded tip on the end – worked better in that it did not provide a final piece of agitation. Also, if I wanted to fill my bottles mostly full, the open-ended cane allowed for this, whereas a springloaded bottle filler did not. Less headspace= less carbonation coming out of solution.[/quote]I hear what you are saying but I don’t like beer dripping out of the wand or tube. Here is the video I shot this past weekend where we were bottling 52 CRAFT 15th anniversary 15% beers. Mullerbrau Bottling Big Beer without foam.
Looks pretty simple and effective, Muller. I think you said that was done at normal serving pressure (10-12psi) right? I assume you have plenty of line on the cobra tap as well.
Most advice I’ve seen is to “cap on foam” – but you’re not getting any foam. Ever get any oxidation, or do you just figure that the bottles will not sit around long enough for it to be an issue?
I’ve tried various methods mentioned above and haven’t really settled on the perfect solution yet. I’ve found the stopper isn’t necessary though; I usually get foam on the first bottle anyway and after that it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.
I try to get foam at the very top and cap on the foam to reduce the air space. Not sure if it really accomplishes anything worth the extra cleaning of foam on the sides but it’s what I do.
I definitely need a bigger waste bucket like in MullerBrau’s video!
[quote=“FriendsR2Thirsty”]Looks pretty simple and effective, Muller. I think you said that was done at normal serving pressure (10-12psi) right? I assume you have plenty of line on the cobra tap as well.
Most advice I’ve seen is to “cap on foam” – but you’re not getting any foam. Ever get any oxidation, or do you just figure that the bottles will not sit around long enough for it to be an issue?[/quote]4-5 psi so line length has nothing to do with it. There is no O2 in there as the little bit of CO2 coming out of solution has pushed the O2 out. If you bump up the pressure another 1 or 2 spi, you can get any level of foam you want. I use O2 absorbing caps for an added measure of protection. I have never had any oxidation from bottling this way.
[quote=“bd1000”]I’ve tried various methods mentioned above and haven’t really settled on the perfect solution yet. I’ve found the stopper isn’t necessary though; I usually get foam on the first bottle anyway and after that it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.
I try to get foam at the very top and cap on the foam to reduce the air space. Not sure if it really accomplishes anything worth the extra cleaning of foam on the sides but it’s what I do.
I definitely need a bigger waste bucket like in MullerBrau’s video![/quote]If you are getting that much foam, then you are doing something wrong. There should be no mess on the sides of the bottle. Make sure you are not drawing air into the mix where the wand goes into the cobra tap. That foams like crazy if leaking and would oxidize your beer for sure.
The 19 gallon poly buckets are $5 at Wally World. They hold 2 cases of bottles and sanitizer solution.
