Carbonate CO2 into bottles?

[Shane Cundy]

I have been brewing beer for decades and the only thing I think i don't have right is the slight yeast taste you get when bottling with sugar in the bottle. Is there a simple way to carbonate with CO2 and not have a secondary fermentation in the bottle? I have a mate who owns a pub so could maybe use his equipment? any thoughts or should I go for a carbonation equipment set up, presumably need a beer gun etc.

[Willem Truter]

Probably worth investing in a keg and force carbonate your beer with co2 rather than doing a ferment to achieve carbonation if you wanted to get away from having sediment / yeast in your beer. A Keg would cost around two hundy for a keg setup. 

[Shane Cundy]

thanks - is the kegging starter kit set up at http://www.brewshop.co.nz/kegging-starter-kit.html

worthwhile? is it simple to get right level of c02? recommend a beer gun bottle filler as well?

wanting to bottle carbonated beer and have a good head.

will this really get rid of yeast taste?

[oliver]

I assume you're pouring carefully and leaving the sediment behind in the bottle. If you're following good brewing practices you shouldn't have any off flavours in bottle conditioned beer. Hard to say without tasting the beer, but you might get a slight improvement by switching to kegging, simply because you're most likely keeping the beer colder. If you give the beer a good long crash cool + hit it with gelatin before bottling you can get the amount of yeast down in the bottles by quite a bit. A few of us will be in hanmer weekend of the 9th of July, we could give you some feedback, maybe help pinpoint the issue.

[Shane Cundy]

I have always used 2 egg whites for finings. Haven't tried gelatin before, presumably you just dissolve in hot water and add? the yeast flavour I am talking about isn't strong or off but is noticeable compared with commercially filtered beers. I am actually used to the taste but would like to see if it can be eliminated altogether.

[oliver]

Cool do you cold crash as well? And what yeast strains are we talking? For gelatin mix 1 tsp with hot water then add to fermenter (once it's already crash cooled - more effective that way). Ideally if you can you want a week or more of crash cooling with gelatin (or finings of your choice). Should get pretty good clarity that way as long as you had a healthy ferment.

[Kevin Sharp]

It's difficult to say whether the Brewshop setup is a good deal. If you get a secondhand keg it might be good in so much as old kegs were built well , but it could also be pretty beaten up, difficult to clean or just worn out. If you get a Chinese regulator it may work fine for you, or (like mine) you might find it's full of swarf and has to be stripped down before it will stop leaking gas. The Micromatic regulators are good, but expensive. On top of that setup you will also need a C02 cylinder and somewhere that will refill it for you. That could be a problem in Hanmer.

I have a love/hate relationship with my beer gun. When it works the results are really good, but ...

* It's a pain  to sanitise. I like to soak everything in StarSan. The length of the stainless tubes makes that a bit difficult.

* For it to work well the beer and the bottles must be cold. A 18 litre keg will fill 36 500ml bottles so you need a lot of spare fridge/freezer space.

* It's quite easy to dislodge the silicon seal at end of the gun. If you do beer will spew out of the gun until you can disconnect it from the keg.

* Despite what Blichmann say, you will lose some carbonation when bottling. It's different for different beers. You need to learn how much to over-carbonate the beer so that it will be right when it's served.

Getting the right level of Co2 in the keg is a question of how well you can control the temperature of the keg and the pressure of the Co2. The good thing about a keg is that you can always add more gas if it's not carbed enough, or (with a bit more difficultly) let some gas out.

Kegging won't necessarily eliminate yeast from your beer. You still need to cold condition it and/or use finings in the fermentor and/or filter the beer.

Lastly, bottle conditioned beer isn't always yeasty - most commercial examples aren't. If you can get your beer clear and then reinoculate with fresh yeast before bottling then you can get very good results. There's a guide to advanced bottle conditioning here https://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/AdvancedBottleConditio...