Bottle to Keg

[mleathers777]

I have a pale ale that's been bottled for 3 weeks now. There is very little carbonation. Is it possible to transfer it from the bottles to a keg and carbonate it that way? Or will that oxidize the beer too much?

 

[DrunkleJon]

Possible? Yes. You would need to make sure that the keg is entirely purged of O2 first, probably a good idea to sanitize the outside of the bottles before opening them and then by putting the bottle in the keg, fill it up.

Contamination is one risk but this should minimize as much of that and oxidization as much as possible.

How undercarbed are they? Drinkable or no? May even consider popping the lids and throwing a carbonation drop in there. Is this a high abv brew? the yeast could have given out if so. Did you taste one? Is there still residual sweetness? If so you may just need more 70 degree or so conditioning time.

 

[Mike37]

I've done it with success. Totally forgot to prime a batch once and just decided to pour the bottles into the keg. Lay down a blanket of co2 in the keg and pour VERY slowly and gently. Took a while but worked just fine.

 

[worxman02]

I'm planning on doing this for a different reason. My liquid QD leaked and I ended up with half a keg at the bottom of my keezer. I siphoned it all out into a carboy and then bottled it up since I wanted to save it but not contaminate the rest of the keg. I'm going to have to check to make sure that none of the bottles got infected. I think they should be ok because I had just cleaned and sanitized the inside of my keezer a couple days before this happened.

 

[mleathers777]

Thank you for the input. I let it sit at 70 for another week and it turned out pretty good.