Blichmann Beer Gun

OK, so I’ve had the Blichman Beer Gun for almost two months now and I haven’t played with it yet, guess what, I just did!

Blichmann Beer Gun 1

Dude, the Beer Gun is way cool. The first time I tried to use it I hadn’t checked how much beer was left in the keg and basically kicked the keg trying to use the Beer Gun on the first bottle, no good. So this time I was feeling more confident and actually had two kegs lined up ready to go. I was going to bottle a six pack each of the Amber Ale and the Pacific Gem Pale Ale. I hadn’t even tapped the keg for the PGPA, and with the keg issues I have been having, that is almost being cocky.

Above you can see my basic set-up mostly hooked up. So essentially it worked like this. Turn the gas pressure down to half the serving pressure, so for me that is about 5 PSI. Then purge the gas from the head space on the keg and hook up the gas at the lower setting to the keg and let it equalize. With a second gas line (turned off) hook that up to the beer gun. Hook a ten foot section of beverage line up to the Beer Gun, then to the keg, then turn the gas on to the Beer Gun. Essentially your ready to go. I flushed the air out of the CO2 line, then pulled on the beer until no foamy beer was coming out, a couple ounces. I then got ready with the first bottle and held my breath.

Blichmann Beer Gun 2Dude, no problems. Basically you insert the Beer Gun into the bottle, pull on the gas button for a couple seconds to flush the bottle with CO2 then pull on the beer lever for maybe 20 seconds and you have a full bottle of beer. I let the foam rise up and over the opening of the top of the bottle, then pulled out the beer gun which left the perfect amount of head space and then hit the head space again with CO2 to blanket the beer. Then I quickly grabbed a cap and capped the beer. It seemed almost too easy. Pretty fast, not to messy or too wasteful, and I knew the carbonation was controlled – shaweet! So I went through six bottles of the Amber then six bottles of the Pacific Gem in this manner with no issue. I then filled a growler of the Pacific Gem too since the Amber is on tap, I can then enjoy the Pacific Gem now too.

I was thinking of messing with the three tap tower I have and hooking that up, but honestly lately I have been thinking of contacting the company I bought it from and possibly doing an exchange for a two tap tower. Sure it’s cooler to have three taps and more variety, but I don’t know, two just seems like it may work really well. We’ll see.

One Response to “Blichmann Beer Gun”

  1. Garrett Says:

    You want 3 taps. You know you do.

    Cool about the beer gun. Glad it went so painlessly.

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