Counter pressure filler plumbing

[dannythemanny]

Evening,

I recently purchased a counter pressure filler and am wondering about the best way to hook it up. It has 6mm barb fittings. I could stick on tubing with jubilee clips, but it could be a pain to get the tubing off after each use. Additionally, it seems to require a connection to the gas bottle, which is tee'd off to the keg and bottle filler. I don't want to leave the filter attached the whole time, obviously, and I don't want to fight with the thing trying to disconnect it from the gas. I was wondering about using the appropriate JG fittings, but I currently use quite a soft tubing for gas line, so not sure if that is suitable with those push fit connectors.

My current setup is that I have the gas bottle hooked up to a splitter/manifold with barb fittings, and the lines from the manifold run down to 2 kegs. I'm thinking it would be most convenient to insert some kind of tee with valves on it (or another manifold, but that seems a needlessly expensive route) between the gas bottle and the manifold. This way, I could shut off the extra line for the filler when it's not in use. I would like to put a JG fitting on the end of the new gas line so that I could connect and disconnect the counter pressure filler without having to struggle getting the hose back over the barb fitting every time I want to disconnect it. I'm sure I'm overthinking this, but I can't see a simpler way! Any advice appreciated.

Dan

 

[DocAnna]

I have ball lock posts attached to the counterpressure filler, which is the one part of my filler that works really well and doesn't leak. The rest of it is naff and doesn't hold pressure, but having ball lock posts means I can just attach the gas line from the manifold to it and I can use a black to black (beer to beer) connection tube for the keg to the filler.

Anna

 

[RoomWithABrew]

SUggest you get a non return ball lock for the gas side or a NRV in the system. Just in case.

 

[dannythemanny]

I have ball lock posts attached to the counterpressure filler, which is the one part of my filler that works really well and doesn't leak. The rest of it is naff and doesn't hold pressure, but having ball lock posts means I can just attach the gas line from the manifold to it and I can use a black to black (beer to beer) connection tube for the keg to the filler.

Anna

This is a great idea. How did you attach the ball lock fittings to the bottle filler? Mine has barb fittings, so I'm thinking the easiest way would be to attach a very short piece of line with jubilee clips to each, then stick a ball lock disconnect on the other end. But how..? I can't seem to find a ball lock disconnect with a hose barb on it. I do have a spare ball lock disconnect with a female threaded part, but I'm not sure if it's BSP or NPT (I'm guessing the latter since it fits a corny keg?) and I'm not sure what size the posts are on corny kegs.

 

[dannythemanny]

SUggest you get a non return ball lock for the gas side or a NRV in the system. Just in case.

Stupid question, but in case of what?

 

[DocAnna]

This is a great idea. How did you attach the ball lock fittings to the bottle filler? Mine has barb fittings, so I'm thinking the easiest way would be to attach a very short piece of line with jubilee clips to each, then stick a ball lock disconnect on the other end. But how..? I can't seem to find a ball lock disconnect with a hose barb on it. I do have a spare ball lock disconnect with a female threaded part, but I'm not sure if it's BSP or NPT (I'm guessing the latter since it fits a corny keg?) and I'm not sure what size the posts are on corny kegs.

I purchased my filler with these attached but they are directly attached. though looks like it has a thread size adapter between the post and the body of the filler.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

They look like 1/4 inch bulkhead fittings so pretty much off the shelf.

 

[dannythemanny]

I see. Mine only has the barb fittings, so there isn't a way to quickly disconnect it once it's hooked up. Seems like there should be a very simple solution to this... Is there a way of putting those disconnects inline so I could put one at the regulator and swap out different gas lines for different purposes (eg. carbing, bottling, racking, etc...)

 

[dannythemanny]

I think I've arrived at a potential solution. If anyone would like to offer any feedback, it would be massively appreciated. I must admit, I'm still wondering whether I'm overengineering this as I imagine it's an issue most people with counter-pressure fillers would encounter and it's hard to find much about it. Everything I've seen says to add a simple tee to split the gas between the keg and the filler, but surely whenever the filler is not attached, all your gas is going to blast out of the branch of the tee that doesn't have anything on it, isn't it? I could fit some sort of inline valve to shut that branch off when it's not in use, but that still leaves the problem of how to (dis/)connect the bottle filler conveniently. So, my solution is thus....

- Buy a carbonation cap, and put it inline straight after the CO2 regulator.

- Attach gas and beer line to the filler, with a liquid out post on the beer side. Attach a tee on the gas side.

- Buy 3 gas ball lock QDs and fit one to my regular carbonation/serving gas line, and the other two onto the two remaining branches of the filler.

- To use the filler, I would then connect one of the tee branches to the regulator via the gas QD and inline carbonation cap, and the other to the keg via the other gas QD. Then attach the liquid side to the same keg with the liquid QD.

- To return gas to "normal" use (ie. carbing up and serving beer), I would connect to the (inline) carbonation cap via the gas QD on my regular gas line.

I can't believe this is this complicated, but I've been at this for hours and can't seem to find a simpler solution!

Cheers,

Dan

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Take off the barbs then I think a quarter inch female to female on the places with barbs. Then you can get some ball lock posts gas and liquid with quarter inch bulkhead fittings and screw them in. Then you should have the same setup as DocAnna.

 

[DocAnna]

Revisiting an older thread here as I was using my counter pressure filler today to bottle some blueberry cider. I still bottle my ciders as generally it's not me drinking it. I really feel I've cracked the plumbing required for using the filler, the real difference today was attaching a length of tubing to the side pressure release, and into a container for waste. In this case my 3 litre flask just because it doesn't fall over and is robust. This meant it was the first time of using it where the foam and excess didn't end up all over me and the bottles. Was even quite fun. That and using a lower pressure for the bottling - just 8 psi which was enough to suppress the foam and serve from the keg.

Two gas feeds, one to the keg, one to the filler from the same manifold, one beer in feed, and one foam/gas bleed tube. Oh there's the other essential component in this picture - a hair band to keep my hair away from my face as it makes it a pain to see where the fluid level is otherwise!

Anna

 

[hoppyscotty]

This is my setup....


Works really well. Got the red ball lock connector for connection to the gas, the long line that goes off shot from the Y-piece goes to the keg/fermenter in the fridge then the long beer line going off to the right hand side goes off to the liquid post on the keg/fermenter. Nice long lines mean I can keep the keg in the fridge while I'm bottling. The wooden frame has ball bearing drawer runners so I can lift up the filler when loading a bottle. For a cheap counterflow bottle filler it works great.