- Have you ever had a situation
where you wish you could just fill
a couple of bottles of beer from your tap,
and not have them oxidized or lose carbonation over time?
If you have, then you might wanna take a look at the device
that I've got in this video.
(gentle machine vibration)
(air whooshing) How's it going?
My name's Brian, I'd like to welcome you to another video.
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Full disclosure.
There is a local Home Brew shop in the United States here
that did send me the product for review,
so I didn't pay for it,
but I'd just wanna share my thoughts
and how it worked for me, with you,
so you can decide whether or not
it's something that you wanna get
for your repertoire of stuff that you have in your brewery.
Now the device I'm talking about
is a counterpressure bottle filler from Tapcooler.
And this is not a new product.
It's been out in Norway for a little while,
I think two or three years, something like that.
But just recently, it's been imported into the United States
by one of the Home Brew supply shops.
I'll leave a link in the description for the product
and all the accessories for it.
Now the device is constructed of stainless steel.
It has a couple of O-rings for sealing in the faucet.
And the way that it works basically,
is you put the device in your faucet.
One thing that I did encounter with that,
is that if your tower's not tall enough
this device when it's in the actual faucet itself
will not allow you to put a beer bottle on it.
But there's some accessories that they make for it
that we'll talk about here in just a second.
The way that the counterpressure bottle filler works
is that you need a forward sealing tap.
And what I mean by that is you need either
a Perlick or an Intertap,
there are a couple of other
forward sealing tap systems as well.
You do need one of those
because standard chrome faucets
that generally come with the towers that you get
would not work,
because they do not forward seal,
and they would spew beer everywhere
if you try to use this device with them.
So you have to use forward sealing taps.
The standard version comes with the counterpressure filler
and it comes with a small barb that you can use
for the air line, for purging the CO2 from the bottle,
as well as filling the head-space with CO2.
Now that's a standard version.
Now there are some accessories that I think
are kind of a must have.
And one of those is the ball-lock fitting adapter.
So you can actually hook up a ball-lock CO2 line
to the device for the purging of the CO2 from the bottle
as well as doing the head-space purge as well.
Now the other thing that they do make for it
that I used in my particular case
because of the tower issue that I talked about earlier,
they do make a Intertap hose adapter for it.
So you can take the O-ring fitting,
the little stem out of the top that has the O-rings in it
and you can actually screw in a short piece of line
that actually has threads that thread up into
the Intertap faucet.
The Intertap faucet system has different nozzles
you can change out.
Using the device is super-simple.
Now what I did in my case
is I have the ball-lock CO2 fitting,
I found that when I turned my CO2 up to about 20 psi,
that was probably the right ratio,
just to hook up to the machine.
Now you can leave the pressure in your keg
the same as you would for serving pressure
because this is a counterpressure filler,
so you don't have to reduce the pressure like you do
in some cases.
I would recommend freezing or refrigerating your bottles
prior to trying to fill them with the device,
'cause it just helps cut down on the foam.
But all you need to do is simply
extend the wand out.
And that wand does extend quite a way.
I mean, you could probably fill Belgium bottles,
any 22 ounce bottles, anything like that.
I mean it extends a long ways.
So extend that out, put it over top of your bottle,
push the button on the top to purge the CO2,
and you kinda hear the difference between a full bottle
and an empty bottle
when you press that the first time.
You can hear it filling up with CO2.
So after you've done that,
then you want to push the silicone stopper
on top of the bottle, and then open up your tap
and just start filling it,
and you can see in the bottle as it rises up,
there's a little bit of foam in the beginning.
But then as you fill it up a little bit more,
then the foam starts to subside,
and then there is a knob on the side
that will allow you to relieve pressure
as you fill the bottle.
So you can get the bottle all the way to the top.
And because the pressure equalizes in the bottle
as you fill it.
So you do need to let some of the CO2 out
as you fill the bottle.
One thing I do like about it
is that relief valve that you can adjust
is very highly adjustable.
So you can turn it with your thumb,
it's easy to turn as you're filling the bottle
and get the right amount of release on the pressure.
Once you're done with that, you simply turn off the tap.
I didn't do that a couple of times and it was fun.
(laughs)
Turn the tap off, then you're gonna slowly take out
the silicone stopper
and let the final amount of pressure out.
And then do one last purge with the CO2
using the button on the side,
and purges the head-space,
and then you're ready to cap the bottle.
Now for those purists out there
and I saw some comments whenever this device
was kind of made known that it was in the U.S.
for the purists out there that don't want to use
their beer lines and the beer tap to fill a bottle with,
they do make another attachment for it,
and that is a long beer line that has a valve in it
to be able to turn it off,
as well as a swivel barb on the other end
so that you can actually attach this device
directly to your keg
and not go through any of your beer lines
or anything like that.
To me, I don't think it's a huge issue.
I don't know if I would use it for longterm storage
of my beer if I'm bottling off of the tower.
But in a minor situation where you wanna grab
a couple of beers to take with you,
or you wanna send a couple of beers with you buddies,
send them home with them,
you didn't bring a growler or whatever.
So I think it would work really great for that.
My conclusion on it,
I think it is a great device.
I mean it's super-simple.
You can clean the thing
and you can actually sanitize it and everything
basically in a pint glass,
which I mean, that is really nice.
I don't have to get out a bunch of hoses
and cords and sanitizer, a big wand
and all that kind of stuff.
So the only complaint I did have with it
was that the beer line for the Intertap attachment
is a little bit short.
As you can see from my video,
it kind of is a little bit short to be able to
put it up in the bottle.
I wanna thank Brian over at Great Fermentations
for sending me the device for review.
Let me know in the comments down below
what you're doing for counterpressure filling,
and keep an eye on their website
because Brian is currently working with the manufacturer,
they do make a canning attachment.
So for those of you that are canning in the U.S. here,
this might be a great device for you to be able to
purge your cans, and counterpressure fill them,
and purge the head-space with CO2.
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This has been Brian for Short Circuited Brewers.
I'll see you in the next video.