Hey guys, wanted to share my fun bottling experience from yesterday. First, the back story. I have my 2nd batch in my kegerator at the moment. Somehow over the last few weeks, I managed to drink it almost all myself. 
I wanted to bottle a few off the keg before it's gone so some friends could taste it. I had no money to put towards new parts, so I had to DIY a bottle filler from what I had on hand. I also realized part-way through that I'm out of caps too. I figured since they wont last more than a week, I'd make it even more ghetto and use some water bottles I had. Method behind the madness aside, here's what I came up with:
(My process is loosely based on Bobby-M's very awesome video: [ame]http://youtu.be/CwIbFQcHYyo[/ame])
Since I have a sankey set up, I used the fluid line from the tower and tap itself. I unhooked the coupler, and removed the line and tap from the tower. While at it, I purged the keg and dropped my pressure to ~5psi. I washed and sanitized everything that would touch the beer. (Including spraying down the coupler and inlet on the keg just for good measure.)
I'm new and don't have an old racking cane around, I used my handy dandy bottling wand with the tip removed. (In case you're wondering, it's marked up with volume marks for both my pots.) The wand didn't fit into the tap snugly, so I used a piece of tubing as an adapter (normally used to connect the wand to the bottling bucket,) and I also re-purposed the #2 drilled stopper from the dip tube.
Once everything was all cleaned and sanitized, I reassembled it into the kegerator. I left the tap faucet loose from the tower so I had play in the line, and left the handle off for easier operation.
With the bottles and caps all sanitized, time to go to work. It actually worked pretty well. The problem with this tap is that little button on the end (part of the sliding valve) leaks when put under pressure. Overall it didn't drip as much as I initially expected. Definitely not well sealed, it leaked CO2 from a few places, but I could puff up the bottle if I let go of the stopper, so it worked well enough to do the job.
Voila! A nice 6-pack of odd little bottles of my APA! Time will tell how well they're carbed, or if they blow up in my fridge.
Update: Good thing I did this, too. The keg blew last night after only ½ glass.
I wanted to bottle a few off the keg before it's gone so some friends could taste it. I had no money to put towards new parts, so I had to DIY a bottle filler from what I had on hand. I also realized part-way through that I'm out of caps too. I figured since they wont last more than a week, I'd make it even more ghetto and use some water bottles I had. Method behind the madness aside, here's what I came up with:(My process is loosely based on Bobby-M's very awesome video: [ame]http://youtu.be/CwIbFQcHYyo[/ame])
Since I have a sankey set up, I used the fluid line from the tower and tap itself. I unhooked the coupler, and removed the line and tap from the tower. While at it, I purged the keg and dropped my pressure to ~5psi. I washed and sanitized everything that would touch the beer. (Including spraying down the coupler and inlet on the keg just for good measure.)
I'm new and don't have an old racking cane around, I used my handy dandy bottling wand with the tip removed. (In case you're wondering, it's marked up with volume marks for both my pots.) The wand didn't fit into the tap snugly, so I used a piece of tubing as an adapter (normally used to connect the wand to the bottling bucket,) and I also re-purposed the #2 drilled stopper from the dip tube.
Once everything was all cleaned and sanitized, I reassembled it into the kegerator. I left the tap faucet loose from the tower so I had play in the line, and left the handle off for easier operation.
With the bottles and caps all sanitized, time to go to work. It actually worked pretty well. The problem with this tap is that little button on the end (part of the sliding valve) leaks when put under pressure. Overall it didn't drip as much as I initially expected. Definitely not well sealed, it leaked CO2 from a few places, but I could puff up the bottle if I let go of the stopper, so it worked well enough to do the job.
Voila! A nice 6-pack of odd little bottles of my APA! Time will tell how well they're carbed, or if they blow up in my fridge.
Update: Good thing I did this, too. The keg blew last night after only ½ glass.
