Counter Pressure Bottle Filler

The Counter Pressure Bottle Filler is used to get carbonated and pressurized beer from a keg into a bottle with minimal loss of carbonation. The design uses three valves, one for gas and one for beer, and a third valve that bleeds pressure from the bottle as the bottle fills.

This is my second bottler. The first one was made from copper and brass components which were cheap and easy to find. However, after using it for awhile, I noticed the bottled beer that was a couple of weeks old began to taste oxidized and very unlike the beer that came from the keg. Most of the time I used the bottler to take beer to club meetings (less than 2 hours in the bottle), but I really began to worry about beer sent to competitions that might spend 2 or 3 weeks in the bottle. I played with the bottling process but none of the process changes that I tried prevented the oxidation from occurring around the 2 week mark. Then I read an article on the web put out by a company called Stainless One. The article quoted a study that showed taste differences between finished beer exposed to copper based metals and stainless steel. The study noted several detectable off flavors from beers exposed to brass and copper. I had been considering an all stainless CBPF, but thought the idea pretty extreme until I read this article. I decided to go ahead and build one. In addition, I changed all of my flare fittings for my kegs to stainless steel also, even though I had never notice off flavors from the tap.

The second bottler is shown below. The bottler is 100% stainless with the exception of a plastic push-connect fitting for the gas line. The beer touches nothing but stainless when being bottled.

This was VERY expensive, but my job allows me access to stainless parts at very reasonable prices, so for me, it was a doable expense. I would not recommend this for the average homebrewer. Expect to pay between $150 - $200 for something like this and expect to have a bitch of time finding the right parts.

The results of using all stainless during bottling have been positive, but still not optimal. The beer will last a couple of weeks if you're very careful, but in the end, it will end up oxidized given enough time. For this reason, I would not recommend counter pressure bottled beer for longer than a couple of weeks. For some reason, bottle conditioned beer is much more stable. If you are entering a competition, I would recommend splitting your batches; kegging half, and bottle conditioning the rest. I think your efforts will be rewarded.

I've put together a PDF file showing the construction and operation of a brass CPBF. You can download this document here: Counter Pressure Bottler Assembly/Operation.