Giving beer as a gift when you keg

Have you ever wanted to give your home brew as a gift/present but only have a keg setup? Since moving house and using my keg equipment more I have been thinking the same..

I use to syphon some beer off into a bottling bucket and condition x amount of beers (usually 6 or 12) to give to, say my dad, as a gift or fathers day present. However in the past the carbonation of the bottles have been somewhat inconsistent and on one occasion (bottled version of my Breakfast Stout) a bottle bomb could of happened. Well almost - upon opening it frothed out more than the Kilauea volcano (too soon?)  so my dad didn't end up having much apart from a big head on a few bottles. You also always get unwanted sediment and the time to condition is always an extra factor to take into effect.

So I thought of the idea to use my keg and use my bottle filler to bottle from my keg directly. Knowing I can get the carbonation right and will eliminate the issues I've had with bottling.
One problem however is that if I give a full 6/12 pack to my dad he could not drink a bottle for a few weeks. Which could mean that the carbonation levels drop in the bottle. All the how to videos I've watched state you should cap on foam and you purge the bottle before filling.

Something that is quite common when bottle filling from a keg, regardless of the way you transfer it. Counter pressure fillers work well but I wouldn't want to leave for 2/3 weeks to find it was flat. A week seems the cut off before carbonation starts to drop.
Transferring to a Flip top bottle.




















So this leaves me with doing some 'Beer Tokens' that I intend to give to the amount (in pints/bottles) that I would usually give. In my case for this Fathers Day I intend to fill my 9l keg for my dad and have beer tokens to the amount (in pints) that the keg holds.

If you have someone that lives close you could do a few bottles a time to take around/they come to you whenever they want, it'll be like having your own personal tap room!

It might even be a bit more fun for them to get stamped for the beers.
I still have my old bottling bucket so can give this a try this time and if it doesn't really work then I can go back to bottling. 
Have you any other good ideas to give your home brew away as gifts?

What beer tokens could look like

Until Next time......Happy Brewing



Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment