Re-bottling question

[Sooperhonk]

So I have (3) 22 oz bombers left of a tastey big Rye IPA that has reached its prime. I wanted to enter this batch into a local competition, not in hopes of winning anything, but for good solid feedback and the chance to experience the competition atmosphere and taste some other kind beer during the people's choice keg competition (whoop whoop).

HOWEVER, competition rules state bottles must be 12 oz only; no bombers allowed. Can anybody recommend a good way to transfer the bottles without losing quality and carb or aerating the beer? Was thinking of racking all 3 bombers into a keg (after purging air from keg and pre-cooling it overnight) with a siphon/cane, carbing or force carbing the keg for a couple of days, then beer-gunning back into 3 small bottles. But will the keg tube dispense that small of a volume from the bottom of keg? Is that way too much head space to expect to carbonate the beer back to a helthy carb to compensate for what is lost during the re-rack? I've never attempted to carb anything other than a full keg....

Should I sit this one out and just share the last of the wicked rye with friends?

SH

 

[flars]

Seems like it would be simpler to purge the 12 ounce bottles of oxygen and siphon the beer into them. Have the bombers at near freezing to (maybe) hold the carbonation. Use a simple siphon tube instead of a racking cane. Pick up the yeast from the bombers in case fizz tabs will be needed to carbonate.

Use the extra 12 ounce bottles to sample for carbonation level after a few days.

Maybe this is just a wild idea. Have no idea if it would work.

 

[Sooperhonk]

Thx Flars. Good approach. In this case, I used a beer gun the first time around with the bombers and the beer was fully attenuated so no yeast or seds to speak of in the bottle. Given that, I got a keg super cold and super clean and transferred the bombers into it tonight and set it at 30 PSI. Will forget it for a couple of days, dial it back down, pull a sip or two from picnic tap until it is right, then re-bottle in the 12 oz-ers. A lot of work merely for some feedback from a couple of judges, but this beer is so good I need to share.

Thanks for your expertise - I will let you know how the re-bottle turns out.

peaceout:fro: