Beer Gun: Bottling from a Keg

Since we dont drink the Steam beer at all, and today I was scheduled to bottle the Belgian Pale, I decided to throw a curveball and keg the Belgian Pale. Since we dont have any empty kegs, we would have to free one up by bottling the contents. I had been reading about bottling from kegs and you can buy commercial "beer guns" for ~$125, but since we do this on-the-cheap, I decided to make one myself. In the picture above you can see that I just inserted a bottling wand into the business-end of a picnic tap, the little stopper (circled in red) is the key to the homemade beer gun. When filling bottles (pictured below) the stopper is in the bottle neck to create a seal. The increased pressure inside the bottle then pushes back against the foam that would be building and minimizes it. You simply fill and then periodically "burp" the excess pressure inside the bottle by deforming the stopper.

It took a few bottles to get the hang of it, and I still need some practice getting a good final volume in the bottle, but overall I was able to successfully bottle 25 bottles of the Steam and then keg the Belgian Pale Ale. The homemade beer gun isnt really meant to bottle entire batches because it is a somewhat slow process: fill 6 bottles, cap 6 bottles, then repeat. The filling is also a bit slower than filling from a bottling bucket and as a result, it took me 30-40 minutes to fill and cap 25 bottles. The main purpose of the gun then is to fill a few bottles (probably 6 or less) for quick use like going to a friend's house, camping, etc. When we need some bottles, we'll just fill up a few and be on our way. Since we have a stopper that also works on growlers, we can fill those too without the mess and waste that normally comes with filling growlers (you know what I mean if you watched a bartender at a brewery fill a growler and waste a lot of beer filling the growler until the foam is gone). The best part of the beer gun was the cost. I already had the bottling wand, picnic tap,and beverage line, so I only had to buy the stopper. Grand total: $0.50.

Full Capacity

We've finally got all 3 taps up and running and Elise has drawn the art work/draft list for the kegerator. Since there isnt a whole lot of room under the taps we had to do the stats running down the side. The beers are tasting good, but we definitely drink the Double Pale and Brown waaaay more than the Steam. It's not that the Steam isnt that good, it's just that the others are so good. The Double Pale Ale is as good as I remember it last time, even with the change in hops.

Now that we have 3 taps going at the same time and seeing how long it took us to drink the Black IPA (~6 weeks) I am thinking that it will take us about 3 months to turn over the 3 kegs. That got me thinking, what happens every 3 months? Seasons, aka seasonal beers. Since we love hoppy beer so much, I'm guessing that 1 of 3 taps will likely always be something of the hoppy persuasion like an IPA, Pale, or even a Black IPA. That leaves the other 2 taps for seasonal-type brews. Since we'll be getting to NC at the beginning of the summer it will be the perfect time to start brewing for the Fall. We just need to start thinking of what kind of beers we want for the cooler, Autumn months. For Winter though, we've already brewed the First Snow, Imperial Stout, and Barleywine, so we'll likely kind of roll the Fall/Winter into one set of beers. I'm kind of leaning towards a porter/stout, maybe a pumpkin or Oktoberfest, and potentially making the Brown Ale again.

Since I had to dump that brown ale a few months back and re-brew it, we now have a bottleneck (pun intended) at the taps. I kegged the Schwarz this morning and it will be carbonating for a few days in the fermentation fridge before I cold crash the Belgian Pale Ale. When that is bottled next Friday, we'll throw the Schwarz back in there and drink it using the picnic tap. It will stay there until we free up a tap, which will hopefully be in a month or two.

Updates

With a day off from work I was able to wax dip the most recent vintage of our Anniversary Barleywine. Cant wait to try it in January 2013.



This is a picture of the resultant blow off from the RIS. I should have started with a blow-off hose, but there is one on there now at least. Even today, about 9 days after brewing, the beer is still bubbling a couple of times a minute. We'll check a gravity in a couple of week to see what the alcohol finished at before it gets secondaried for 4 weeks.

As for the 2 current beers on tap, Steam and Brown Ale, we are really enjoying both. The Steam is just a nice, simple, every-day kind of beer. It doesnt have any flavors that will blow you away, but it is a very good beer. Originally, I didnt like it that much, but I've come around to appreciate what the beer is all about. Nothing fancy, just simple.

As for the brown, it's drinking really good right now too. I still dont get much of the 1 oz of dry hops, but other than that, I cant complain about it at all. Now that it's fully carbonated it's an easy to drink and goes well with a wide variety of food. Even though the brown was kegged about 2 weeks after the steam beer, I bet we'll finish it first because it's so good and someone always seems to be drinking it.

We are going to give the IPA (I think that is what we are going to call the double pale ale) another couple of days in the kegerator before we try it at which point we'll have 3 beers on tap for the first time. With the schwarzbier planning on being kegged next weekend, that will give us 4 beers. As a result I bought a simple picnic tap (the kind that people think of at a keg-party) and we'll store it in the fermentation fridge. After about 3-4 weeks in there, we'll start to drink that one too and we'll move it to the main kegerator when a tap opens up.

Russian Imperial Stout: last brewday in Colorado

Saturday was the last time we'll make a beer in Colorado (but who knows, we may be back someday!) We made a Russian Imperial Stout, the same recipe for Cooper's beer we brewed last year. Based off what we have brewed so far, I am thinking this is taking the place of our previous "Christmas" spiced beer as we havent brewed that yet, and dont have any plans for any more high gravity "Winter Seasonals." So for the winter we'll have our First Snow, the Imperial Stout, and then in January we'll start drinking our Anniversary Barleywine.

We made a 10 gallon batch this time with our neighbor, who will be taking 5 gallons of it for himself. Since the grain bill is so large, over 20lbs for 4 gallons, we had to mash in separate coolers and then drain into the kettle. Going with the same theme of the year, this brew's gravity will be a bit less than the previous version, and will hopefully end at about 9.25%. The grist contained 1 lb of crystal 120, and 0.75 lbs of black patent, chocolate malt, and 0.63 lbs of roasted barley; all of which contributed to the dark brown/coffee colored mash you see above. The mash (and even the milled grain) smelled very good and left a nice smell in the garage throughout the day of chocolate, dark malts, and hints of coffee.

Because of the timing of the move, we wont be able to put raspberries on this batch. We will let it ferment for 4 weeks and then it will be in secondary for about 3.5 weeks before we have to bottle it a day or two before we leave. Normally, I would have liked to have it secondary for about 6-8 weeks, and then get a week of raspberries, but with the move, we dont have the time for that. Although there is a small chance that I will decide to not bottle and pack the beer in secondary on the moving truck and bring it to Raleigh to finish there. With the cross-country transport, I'm not too concerned about the sloshing around, as it will be sealed very tightly, probably with duct tape, I am more concerned about the temperatures. June is hot, and sitting in the back of a un-airconditioned truck may not be the best thing for the beer....maybe we'll store it in the Rogue as we drive. I dont have to make a decision yet, but I'm sure we'll decide in a few weeks what the plan for the RIS will be.

On another note, we have also dry hopped/kegged the brown ale and double pale ale. Before we started kegging, we would let the yeast ferment for about 2 weeks, then add our dry hops to the bucket for 10-14 days before bottling, and then waiting 2 weeks to drink the beer. Now that we have the kegs, we are going to speed things up a bit. After about 2 weeks of fermentation, we cold crash the beer to drop everything out, and then we transfer the beer to the keg.





We then take some nylon leggings and add our dry hops and put that into the keg. The keg is then left for a week to dry hop at room temperature. We do this at room temperature because if we did it all in the fridge, the cold temperatures would make the process very very slow. By doing most of the dry hopping at room temp, we allow the hop aromas to come out, and then by keeping the hops in the keg while in the fridge it will slowly build up as well as last a lot longer.



The brown ale was put in the fridge on Saturday morning, and based off a few samples, it will likely be fully carbonated by the following Friday. The beer does taste very good though, nice and malty, although I'm not getting as much of the hop aroma as I thought I would with an ounce of hops. Still a very good beer though, and we are excited to try the double pale ale this weekend too. The picture above is the Double Pale ale connected to the 5 lb CO2 tank while it dry hops. If you look at the left side of the top of the keg you can see a small white piece of teflon tape which we use to essentially hang the bag of hops from. Because we dont want the dip tube to become clogged with the hop bag, we susped the bag a bit off the bottom with the teflon tape (which looks and feels like a linen-type material).

#TeamDietrich

Belgian Pale Ale

Yesterday we brewed 10 gallons of our Belgian Pale Ale. A friend from school is just starting to get into brewing beer, so we invited him to come see all grain and help brew a batch of beer. That way, he can see what we do, and then get 2-cases of beer out of it.

This time, we went back to the original recipe Elise wrote in 2009. The last batch we split the crystal malts into a combination of 60 and 10, instead of just crystal 60. Elise's recipe also calls for Amarillo and Cascade hops, whereas the last one used Saaz, a European hop. We're still using the same yeast, the Westmalle strain, so it will be interesting to see how different this new one is from the previous batch.

Side Notes: the steam beer is on tap and is carbonating. It's probably 85-90% there, and should be fully carbonated by the middle of next week. We will be kegging the brown ale today and will be dry hopping in the keg. We'll keep the keg at room temp for a week for the hop flavors to get into the beer, and then we'll put it into the fridge. Because the fridge is so cold, the hop flavors will last a lot longer in the beer, but they'll also take a bit longer to peak, which is why we are giving the hops a week at room temp. In the 7-10 days we'll also keg (and dry hop in the keg) the Double Pale ale. Looking forward to trying both of those beers on tap!