Introduction
After making the jump from bottling to kegging - we still wanted a way to be able to bottle our beer occasionally so we could share it with friends and family - or take a couple of bottles to parties etc. Counter pressure bottle fillers looked good but cost more than what we were willing to pay - so we thought we'd give the KegLand Bottle Filler Beer Gun a try.
Here are our findings after using it a couple of times.
Overall Feel
The gun itself feels good - made mostly of metal/steel it feels sturdy and weighty in the hands. It's also easier to keep clean and sanitise when all the parts that touch your beer are made of stainless steel, with the exception of a rubber grommet/stopper at the tip.
Connecting Beer & Gas Lines
It can be messy to setup though - we felt like we had beer and gas lines going everywhere when putting it together. We wanted to be able to use the feature of purging the bottles with CO2 gas prior to filling so needed to hook up our gas bottle to the gun.
However, we also needed the same gas bottle to be connected to the keg to maintain pressure needed during dispensing via the gun. A push in T-piece fitting (KegLand Duotight) worked very well for this and made it quick and easy, but it can be a little overwhelming figuring out what goes where the first time.
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| The KegLand Bottle Filler Beer Gun in action |
To their credit though, KegLand do include two decent length hoses with the beer gun (but not the T-piece I previously mentioned) and some stepless clamps to secure them in place on the gun which is good. It would be great though to have standard gas and liquid ball disconnects included on the gun. This would make connecting/disconnecting the gun a breeze as getting the included hoses slipped over the barbs of the gun was a bit tricky and took some time/effort (hint: dip the hoses into some boiling water to help soften them).
Instructions
Another point worth mentioning is the inclusion of a detailed instruction manual with the beer gun - we found this especially helpful in understanding exactly how the gun works and how best to use it. It's also available online so we found ourselves studying it before purchasing - to better understand how it works and compares to other offerings available on the market.
Our Experience with Filling Bottles
Due to some poor planning, our first attempt at filling bottles wasn't a huge success. The very first bottle had a good inch or so of foam in it which we attribute to two main causes;
- The keg was still set at our original serving pressure of 11 psi (instructions recommend using 2-4psi)
- The bottles were at room temperature - ie. not chilled
Realising what happened with the serving pressure, we made some adjustments for the second bottle and got improved results, but still had 1-2cm of foam forming - so a little bit of overflow and wasted beer ensued by filling the bottle completely and letting the excess foam spill over (sitting the bottles on an old rag/blanket turned out to be a good idea!).
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| Our second attempt at filling - using chilled bottles. Little to no foaming |
My second attempt at filling bottles went much better. We were using 750ml plastic PET bottles (same as the first attempt) but remembered to place them in the fridge 24 hours before filling them to ensure they were at the same temperature as the beer when being filled.
This made a huge difference - there was little to no foaming after filling 4 bottles which made for a much nicer (and cleaner!) experience. The instructions do mention the bottles should be chilled prior to using, and it appears it does indeed make a big difference.
Price
The cost of the bottle filler beer gun is pretty reasonable in our opinion, coming in at just under AU$40.
Conclusion
We'd highly recommend others to give the KegLand Bottle Filler Beer Gun a try if they're after an affordable and easy to use method of bottling their homebrewed beer from a keg.
An alternative to a beer gun like this is a counter pressure bottle filler. Check out our review of the Ultrafill Counter Pressure Bottle Filler to find out more.
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