Sunday, April 24, 2011

Bottling Day: American IPA

Before I started this blog, I had an American IPA in my keg. It was actually the first beer that I drank once I got my freezer chest, and it was really good. Unfortunately, I'm running low on it, and it's time to fill the keg with my Chocolate Stout. Before I can keg up the stout, I need to clear out the last bit of the IPA. There's enough left in the keg that I want to bottle it, rather than toss it.

I'm feeling a bit lazy, so rather than using the heavy-duty keg bottle-filler, I thought I'd try a trick that someone recommended at my local homebrew club. Basically, you can quickly fill a bottle with beer by jamming a spring loaded bottle filler directly into a cobra tap.

My picture is wonky because it's sideways, but you can see the spring loaded filler that I've jammed into the tap.


It worked, but not particularly well. The bottles all foamed up as I filled them with the tap. By the time that I was able to cap them off, they had lost a significant amount of CO2 and beer. Most of the bottles are only about half full.


I'm not sure whether my keg pressure/tubing ratio is to blame, or whether this method just doesn't work well for 22 oz bottles, but it sure didn't work well for me. I probably won't be doing it again.

One side note is that, even from the cobra tap into the glass, I get major foaming. I'm pretty sure that the tubing width/length is not set to the proper ratio for the pressure/temperature of my keg.

No comments:

Post a Comment