Maybe I'm nuts, but can't you get BeerGun results with a growler filler...?

[Geordan]

First I will lay out some assumptions. The BeerGun works well because:
a) It has a long beer line
b) Bottles are flushed with CO2
c) It's easy to clean
d) Performance is improved by chilling bottles

So I still haven't gotten a BeerGun of my own, but for the third time I've had a picnic tap fail on me while bottling for competition with the BMBF -- maybe I'm buying the worst quality picnic taps in the world, but three in a row have broken during bottling for comps.

In a bout of frustration, I flushed the remaining bottles with CO2 using an open hose attach to my secondary reg, attached my growler filler to the tap (I think these are sometimes called "Ontario Growler Fillers?") and just filled the bottles that way.

I had already purged the kegs and run the pressure down to 4psi or so, and the bottles had been sitting at -10c overnight; the results seemed perfect. I just filled till there was a bit of overflow, topped it off after pulling out the filler, and capped on foam. There was very, very little foaming, and the process SEEMED incredibly easy.

Am I missing something here, or am I correct in assuming that flushing bottles with CO2 and filling with the growler filler is ESSENTIALLY the same result as the BeerGun, with theoretically with less convenience?

 

[Jipper]

Geordan,

You're essentially correct. The beer gun is nice because the trigger is very responsive (can stop filling and cap quickly) and you can flush the bottles easily. The three different ways to fill bottles from a keg that I'm aware of are:

Out of the faucet.
BeerGun / Growler Filler and Tubing.
Counter Pressure Filler.

Counter pressure is a little more involved, but has the best results in my experience. Not as user friendly as a BeerGun for the first handful of times, but great once you get the hang of it.

Good luck with your filling! Hope this helps a little...