G Strong's Competiton Bottling Technique

[BrewSLO]

The Soda bottle and Carbonation cap method sounds real easy and I'm sick of beer gun's and all the homemade mods that never seem to lead to carbonated beer!

I'm pretty new to bottling from the keg in general and just now starting to enter competitions so I need a method. I bought a carbonation cap yesterday and am trying a 1.5 liter bottle now. It is filled about 3/4 full and I pressurized it to 20psi. I shook it a couple of times. How long should I let it sit before bottling?

I guess what I'm really asking is...when using this method, how does one know how much pressure to use to get the desired results. I assume that you have to overshoot the regular formulas for volumes of CO2 since your going to loose some in the bottling process.

Thanks for any advice

[Blowmax10]

make sure you purge your empty bottle out with CO2 - otherwise you will end up with some really nasty oxidized beer

[Chupa LaHomebrew]

His method sounds very interesting, but I don't see what's wrong with a Beergun. I use mine all the time and I'm very happy with it. And I have the advantage of not worrying about oxidation because the bottle is purged.

I'm not sure how much CO2 you will need, I guess it's really a matter of experimentation and developing a technique. The same goes for Beerguns and CPF's, all require a certain technique to get good results.

[HopRunner]

Yeah, this is kind of a confusing thread... You have a keg/CO2 and a beer gun? If you are "new" to bottling from the keg, how can you be "sick of it"????

If you have a keg and a CO2 system and don't want to use your beer gun, then why don't you just do the Tasty McDole way? Seems like you are making things harder than necessary.

I have a kegging system and I use my beer gun when I want to fill many bottles. Doesn't seem that hard... If I just want to fill a couple of bottles to take to a friends house I do like Tasty and stick a hose in the tap and fill the bottles from the bottom.

It took me a couple of tries to get the hang of the beer gun but I got it. I bottle all of my competition beers with the beer gun. Granted, I've never won anything but I've never gotten dinged for carbonation!

[BrewSLO]

to clarify...I don't have a beer gun or counter pressure filler but I have the picnic tap on a racking cane with a number 2 stopper. I've used it about 6 times and so far every bottle I've tested a couple weeks later is flat as hell and my entry into NHC was dinged for nothing expect that it was completely flat, of course that was plenty! I'm just looking for a more reliable method. I understand it is probably user error because plenty of people use the method with great success.

I think I'll play with Gordon's method and see what happens.

[Henning1966]

It was mentioned in that segment of the show that the bottles need to be cold. It is that way with any method the colder the bottles the more co2 will stay in the beer. I use a Racking cane in a cobra tap and a co2 charger to flush bottles with no stopper on the cane. Just the cane that goes to the bottom of the bottle and put the bottles in the frezzer for a few hrs to get cold. I have not had a problem with this method so far.

[Chupa LaHomebrew]

I think when using any method that is not counter-pressure it helps to turn your kegerator temperature WAY down a day or two before bottling.

For me, using the beergun I find that if I get the beer temp in the low 30's and keep the bottles cold, I'm not losing any CO2. Should work the same for the Tasty filling method.

[RoyalBrewing]

I've always wondered - how are you supposed to get the bottles cold AND keep them sanitized? Do you stick the bottles in the fridge/freezer, then give them a quick dunk in Star-San immediately before filling?