I brewed up the 115th Dream Hopbursted Extract kit back in October, let the bottles sit until after Christmas and the 1L PET bottles had enough firmness to them after almost 6 weeks that I put them in the fridge and have been sampling them for the past few weeks. The plastic bottles (about half the batch) seem to have carbed decently but the glass bottles are sadly still mostly flat. The beer tastes great but definitely needs some more bubbles. If I decided that I wanted to transfer the contents of my bottles to a keg and carbonate it, what would be the best way to attempt this? Pour gently into the keg? Pour gently into bottling bucket and rack to keg? I’m assuming I would still need to prevent oxidation as much as possible in the transfer process. Is it worth the attempt? They’ve been in the fridge for well over a month at this point so I’m hoping I can find a way to transfer while leaving the sediment behind if possible. Any tips?
Your better off uncapping the bottles and doing one of two things.
Dropping in a carb tab and recapping or adding a little Champagne yeast.
Trying to get it back into the keg would probable end up in disaster oxidation being the culprit.
By the way one of my fellow brewers is having the same problem in bottles with his beer.
Right now he is warming up the bottles to room temp for a week or so to see if it changes any.
If not he will try one of the things I mentioned above.
[quote=“Radagast”]I brewed up the 115th Dream Hopbursted Extract kit back in October, let the bottles sit until after Christmas and the 1L PET bottles had enough firmness to them after almost 6 weeks that I put them in the fridge and have been sampling them for the past few weeks. The plastic bottles (about half the batch) seem to have carbed decently but the glass bottles are sadly still mostly flat. The beer tastes great but definitely needs some more bubbles. If I decided that I wanted to transfer the contents of my bottles to a keg and carbonate it, what would be the best way to attempt this? Pour gently into the keg? Pour gently into bottling bucket and rack to keg? I’m assuming I would still need to prevent oxidation as much as possible in the transfer process. Is it worth the attempt? They’ve been in the fridge for well over a month at this point so I’m hoping I can find a way to transfer while leaving the sediment behind if possible. Any tips?
:cheers:
Rad[/quote]
I’ve done this once.
I used a funnel and a tube to gently rack the beer to the keg. Worked good.
I assumed that oxidation would have to be my biggest concern. That’s why I asked about the bottling bucket before the keg. I could put the bucket on an angle and pour the beer gently from the bottles to the bucket and then siphon to the keg easier than attempting to gently pour a bottle into the keg. If I had a racking cane that would fit into my bottles, I could just use that. I cry inside a little every time I open a bottle to find a flat beer. Thankfully it’s not the whole batch, just about half.
Thankfully it’s not the whole batch, just about half.