I exclusively keg, save for the one comp I’ve entered (so far) and the occasional growler for when I have to leave my house to drink.
Only have 2 kegs, so I bottle the really big beers. Make a no-sparge barleywine every Nov that I bottle. Basically, anything over 10% is going into bottles. Takes me a while to finish 'em.
I almost exclusively keg unless my 3 kegs are full. Then I will bottle the beer. I also bottle beer that I plan on giving away to others.
I usually do 6 gallon batches then keg 4 or 5 and bottle the rest.
Sometimes I bottle some from a keg with a counter pressure filler — but, that is only if I need some bottles and I’m out of filled bottles and still have beer in the keg.
I bottle exclusively and I enjoy the process. There’s a Zen thing to it or something. I like assembling the equipment, boiling the priming sugar and sanitizing everything. I put some music on and go to work. It usually takes a little over an hour for a five gallon batch. If I were brewing bigger batches, I might feel a little differently.
Man I must just need to find my rhythm. It took me almost two. But at least I remembered to sanitize the bottling bucket this time. It’s like learning to brew all over again!
I bottled for about two years and then built a mini-fridge kegerator. I haven’t bottled since I started kegging, except for last weekend when I bottled half of the Surly AHA Rally Beer and put the rest in a 2.5 gallon cornie.
A little off-topic, but I’d really like to perfect a way to bottle from the keg so I can start entering competitions. I would rather not have to bottle my competition batches. After four years and 70+ batches, I’d like to start getting some helpful feedback on my brews. Plus, I like to compete. 8)
I mainly keg, but bottle maybe 25% overall for competitions and to give as gifts.
Big beers go into bottles. Sour beers and funky beers go into bottles, mainly to age.
Meads and ciders go into bottles, because I lager in kegs and I only have 13 kegs.
Sombody already pointed out that one lazy AHA board member does the most complicated bottling that I have seen. 
I do both.
When cold conditioning is completed and the beer is carbonated I bottle about 6-12 bottles from the cold keg into cold and sanitized bottles using a picnic tap with a short tube attached. The cold keeps the CO2 from gushing out and I can bottle clear carbonated beer. These bottles are then for sharing, evaluating and sampling. The rest gets transferred to a serving keg. Evaluating beer from bottles eliminates possibly inconsistent carbonation from serving and any possible infection or taste change that may happen during serving. Something I seek to eliminate as well, but it is nice that I can cut this out of the loop.
For beers that I plan to age (Doppelbocks for example) I bottle the whole keg into about 2 cases the same way.
Kai
Here is what I do:
- put the beer in a corny keg with a shortened dip-tube and let it carbonate in there (natural or artificial)
- move the keg into a cold fridge (32F is good) and let it cold condition in there, You may even add finings to accelerate the clearing process
- Sanitze a few bottles. I do this by adding a squirt of water, cap with tin foil and bake them in the over at 250F for ~2 hrs.
- Once the bottles are cooled place them with the beer in the fridge/freezer. Make sure the bottles don’t freeze. This will create ice crystals that cause gushing during filling.
- Sanitize a picnic tap and a short piece of a racking cane. Put the tube into the picnic tap to make a “beer gun”
- W/o moving it connect the keg to CO2 and release the pressure until you have only 2-3 psi in there. Set the regulator to the same pressure.
- get a large sanitary mug into which you can rest the “beer gun” and catch any foam flowing from the bottles.
- place bottle caps into sanitizer
- now take a bottle, remove tin foil and fill the bottles. If it foams too much, reduce the pressure.
- let foam drip into the mug
- cap on foam to eliminate head space O2. If the beer doesn’t foam enough squirt some more beer into it or tap the side of the bottle.
- keep filling as many bottles as you need.
I bottle from a lagering chest and have a large black pan like this one (http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=19252-000001569-ST3608&lpage=none) set such that I can keep the bottles and all the mess in it.
Once I’m done I wipe off the bottles and label the caps.
Kai
Thanks, Kai! I’ll give that process a shot.
My process is pretty similar to Kai’s. I use a stopper on the racking cane; that seals the top of the bottle, and then you can lock the picnic tap open and fill by squeezing the stopper to control the flow of beer. Like a two dollar counter-pressure filler.
I’ve also found that I have to deliberately over-carbonate the keg by about half a volume, to compensate for the pressure lost in bottling.
Those are the tricks that may get me there …will be trying this soon a10t2
[quote]Actually I don’t have a kegging system (yet) but Santa may be good to me this year. I’d expect I would only bottle after that if I had all my kegs in use and needed the keg. I would then bottle to free up the keg. And also bottle for competitions.
[/quote]
+1 for me. Bottling is horrid.
question-which probably has no definative answers:
How many Kegs does a newb kegger need. I have a couple sources-the legit one is about $15 each picked up. I am thinking I want 6-8 to start with.
question 2-when I rack from primary can I condition at my beer cellar temp? -So if I get more kegged than I’m drinking, can I build up a stockpile?
Keg, keg, keg…and sometimes bottle…
I’ll bottle certain specialty batches, or split a batch and put half in a 3gal keg and bottle the rest…
Beer Gun when I find out a keg’d batch is really good and I want to gift some bottles…
I used to keg and bottle, but I have gotten really lazy and mostly just keg. II have 4 or 5 kegs half full of barley wines and RIS that I really need to run off to bottles through my CPBF but … I just never make the time. Need to set out a day to do that. Could use those kegs!
I keg almost exclusively, but I do use a CPBF to fill bottles for gifts and comps. I also may bottle the dregs of a keg to make room for the next in line in the serving fridge. I use growlers to transport small amounts around the neighborhood.
I only bottle as I’m a ways away from accumulating the equipment I’ll need to keg but I plan on working my way towards that. I just need to make sure I drink enough beer to get the bottles I need.
I made my first beer in 1994, I have always bottled. Call me a glutton for punishment! Maybe some day I will keg, maybe not. This last spring I bottled 40 gallons in one day, that was rough. :-\
That’s almost 18 cases…I hope you were using something bigger than 12 oz