Counter Pressure Filler

What is a Counter Pressure Bottle Filler?

In the homebrew world, a counter pressure bottle filler is a tool modeled after a professional bottling line that allows for high quality filling of individual bottles. Professional lines may have several counter pressure fillers on a single bottling line to quickly fill high volumes of beer, but homebrewers can buy a single bottle counter pressure filler for use with their home kegging/bottling setup.

The single counter pressure filler looks a lot like a gun. It has two inlets, one for gas and one for beer. There is a valve to switch between these two, and there is a long post with a stopper on it. The long post with a stopper is the output, and it is the part you will be sticking into your beer.

A counter pressure filler looks a lot like a beer gun, but the inlet intended for use with gas is the major difference.

How Does a Counter Pressure Bottle Filler Work?

A counter pressure filler works by attempting to create the optimum bottling conditions through the following steps:

• Sanitation

Sanitize all bottles, nozzles, hoses, and caps needed. Basically, anything that will come in contact with your beer or your counter-pressure filler needs to be sanitized.

• Flush the Bottle With Carbon Dioxide

This reduces your beer’s exposure to oxygen during bottling and will help keep it fresh.

• Pressurize the Bottle

This is done with more CO2. Having the bottle pressurized before filling prevents foam-overs and helps maintain the optimal pressure for your bottles.

• Fill the Bottle With Beer

By turning a valve on the counter-pressure filler, you will go from injecting CO2 to injecting beer. It won’t foam because the bottle is already pressurized, so CO2 is not released from suspension.

• Cap the Bottle

It’s best to do this immediately, so having a bottling partner is helpful if you’re doing a large batch. If you are bottling alone, you may find it best to fill and cap in smaller batches to prevent the bottles from releasing all of the precious CO2 you have worked so hard to maintain.

You’ll have to be pretty fast on the capping portion The beer will want to foam out when you break the seal, but that is OK. Capping on foam just means there is even less oxygen in the bottle, but you still will need to be fast at it. Once again, it really helps to do this as a two person team.

You’ve now manages to minimize oxidation and CO2 loss during bottling, and ensured your beer ages well. As a matter of fact, once you’ve capped your beer, you can rest easy knowing that you’ve packaged it like the pros.