Ghetto keg overflow storage

[Matt in Birdham]

After reading about the carbonation caps for PET bottles on another thread here, I picked one up to use as a counterflow bottle filler (which I haven't tried yet). Then when I was kegging up a brew I had a few litres left over, as usual, so I just dumped it in a 2l pet bottle, put the cap on, gave it 40psi and a shake once a day for a few days and was drinking well carbed beer, clear beer after a few days.

Just wondering if anyone else is using these caps in the same way? They seem like wonderfully useful gadgets - from counterflow bottle filling, to pushing cleaner through your lines, to simple small-volume kegging. I'm thinking of getting a few more and getting hold of a few brown 3l PET bottles (need to fine a cheap cider drinker) and just using for keg overflow. The really useful thing is that I can easily store another 3 or so bottles on my keezer compressor ledge.

This bottle was full (2l), cleared up very nicely in 3 days on gelatin (also gives a nice visual indication of how the keg might be doing), and allows for easy force carb with high psi and a shake (I never bother in the keg - just serving pressure for a few weeks). At the moment I am just opening, pouring and re-flushing but a dip-tube of 1/4 inch line and a picnic tap should work fine, with the odd gas top-up.

[Goulders]

I tend to use mine for cleaning lines and the occasional pet bottle for homebrew club. I use the cheap Chinese Pegas type for bottling a few bottles at a time

[Matt in Birdham]

I haven't tried filling bottles with it yet - hopefully it will be OK, as I only plan to do this very occasionally.. sounds like a bit of a faff, but usable for one offs. I'm more excited about the "mini keg" idea now, as I had been looking into getting some smaller (9 litre) kegs to sit on the shelf in my keezer. The problem is, those are very hard to come by used and rather expensive new. I think a couple of 3l bottles (3 should fit) will be just the job.

[Rogermort]

They're great for filling bottles. Just put a length of beer line on the barb under the cap so that it just reaches the bottom of the bottle. Flush with Co2, relieve the pressure and then counterflow fill from a Corny. Excellent way of taking a couple of litres to parties.


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