Possibly a stupid question, but here it goes... I've been thinking about picking up a keg or two to get away from the bottling process. However, I don't have any fridge space, or really any room for a keezer at the moment. I was thinking I could force carb and leave the keg in the basement and fill a couple growlers or flip-tops at a time and refrigerate those. Is there any reason this wouldn't work? Thanks in advance!
Looks like he is bottling cold from the keg. Warm carbonated keg = foam as Sarcastro said. edit: but maybe the OP could keep the beer uncarbed with a little CO2 pressure and bottle when needed and use a carbonator cap to force carb a PET bottle. Shake it and toss it in the fridge.
Have you filled from a warm keg with this technique? I know you can fill from a warm keg with true counter pressure filler, but counter pressure filling is a pain.
I have filled warm from a keg, huge mistake! No foaming issues when filling, but no foam in the glass either. Warmer temps cause CO2 to come out of solution faster, my Wee Heavy was fine at room temp, but then after bottling and chilling it is almost flat.
I've done this with success, you can definitely overcarb with the cap and shake method, but worst case you're out a liter or two. Not super convenient, but it does work.
You could take a large party bucket, fill it with ice water to chill the keg down on bottling day to avoid the warm beer issue. I used a half inch silicone flex tube to bridge the gap between my bottling wand and my perlick the other day and the result was ok but not really carbonated enough for me. I think I might try this next. The angle at the bottom seems promising.
I have a beer gun and I have a broken racking cane setup as shown in the video above. The racking cane bottler is so simple and easy. I love it for quick fills but if I'm bottling something for the cellar I go beer gun, which takes up way more time.
You could run a copper coil of beer in the fridge and dispense from there, leaving the keg and CO2 next to the fridge, probably wouldn't take up much more room than a milk jug. It would require you to drill a hole in the fridge though. This would probably work pretty well if you are only dispensing one or two at a time. Anymore than that you would end up with warm beer.
beer should not be dispensed through copper. tempting, but poison. the beer will leach enough copper to be a health concern. general rule - copper before fermentation ok (required even). copper after fermentation bad. Cheers.
Look into making a jockey box or something even.. Could help you out.. You'd go through some ice, and beer loss, but would work for what you've got going on. Would take up less space than a fridge, but would probably cost about the same by the time you get it all together.
I did not know that, i figured since we use it everywhere else, including household plumbing, it would be fine, and for this application it is a better temperature conductor than stainless. Thanks for the heads up.
