I Said I'd Never Do This...

Bottling sucks! But I had to free up some keg-space, and I had to send Aric some of our Bloody IPA.

This beer is a real ass-kicker and was nicknamed "The ZJ" by a friend somewhere around the bottom of the inaugural keg. If you have to ask...

(ok fine here)

You Can't Take it With You... or Can You?

The only downside I have found so far of kegging is that you can't take your beer with you. Not without building something anyway, and that is far down on my list of projects. It IS on the list though...

However, I read of a method of bottling beer straight from the keg. This allows you to carbonate your beer with CO2 as usual in the keg and then fill up some bottles as well. The process involves putting together an improvised "beer gun" and filling bottles in a similar manner to the way breweries bottle.

The best part is that my dad gave me two cases of old-school returnables. I haven't seen these kinds of bottles or cases (the real thick cardboard ones) in years. I'm not even sure if they are still made... (UPDATE: All the major breweries have stopped distributing beer in returnable bottles. AB stopped about 2 years ago with the rest following shortly after. This may only apply here in MD, but I doubt it.)

Today I pulled a baker's dozen of them to try to soak the labels off with warm water & one step. I have heard this works really well, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

I'm hoping to bottle a 12 pack tomorrow to take to the beach next week. If it works, I'll detail the method here in the future. Otherwise I'll have 12 really flat beers to drink...