From keg to bottle

Brewing Processes
1

My buddy was over the other night and we were drinking some home brew. He liked it and wanted to take home a couple bombers. I havent bottled since I moved over to kegging a few years ago so I dint have bottles set up and ready to go.

Anyway, I just sanitized a couple of clean bottles, held them up to the faucet and filled them. When they were full, we capped them. They should hold their carbonation in the bottle for a while, right? I made sure we didnt leave a lot of head space and we capped on top of foam.

2

They should be fine.  They’ll hold their carbonation as long as any bottled beer, the main problem is the carbonation that was lost during bottling.  But they’ll be fine, if a little flat.

3

To make it a little easier and less messy next time you can do the following.

Get a short piece of tubing that will fit inside your faucet.  At the other end of the tubing have a piece of old racking cane, about as long as the tallest bottle (including growlers) you want to be able to fill.  Put a number 2 (or 6.5 for growlers) rubber stopper on the cane.  With the wand (your piece of racking cane) to the bottom of the bottle and the stopper fit tight in the bottle with your thumb on it open the faucet.  The beer will start to flow and then stop when the pressure builds.  Gently “burp” the stopper to let out pressure a bit at a time until the bottle is filled.  Close the faucet.  Remove the stopper and wand and cap.  Much less spillage and less loss of carbonation.

4

Thanks, Guys. I dropped the pressure down to almost nothing so there wasnt any loss. Probably still lost some carbonation but we didnt lose any beer!

I’ll try the bottling wand/stopper trick the next time someone wants to take one home. Thanks again for the tips.

Matt

5

I have bottled beer this way many, many times while in a hurry to get to a brew club meeting or a gathering of some sort. If you plan to drink them within a short period of time they’ll be fine. In addition to a little loss of carbonation there will be some level of oxidation incurred but again if they are consumed within a reasonable amount of time they should be good to go.

6

I’ll be doing some counter-pressure bottling sometime this week.

In a pinch, I’ll just tap off a growler to take with me somewhere…  :wink:

7

I used to use growlers for a quick carry along but went to plastic juice bottles after I broke one in the back floorboard my girlfriend’s (now wife) Honda.  :o The smell was there until she traded it in.  I probably would still hear about it if I didn’t make the switch. LOL.
-J.K.L.

8

Yeah, I need to get a few of those ball-lock caps for 2-Liter soda bottles, so I can start using plastic more for transportation.