We have started canning with the Oktoberfest seamer and this filler. As you can see, it is a 4-head counter pressure bottle filler. I got it a while ago and have bottled a number of specialty bottle releases on it, and continue to use it for that. However, I made some modifications to adapt it to canning and am not utilizing the counter pressure feature. I lengthened the fill tubes by adding vinyl tubing that is more flexible to allow us to pull the cans out without tipping them too much.
So far, we have run three packaging sessions on it. One was an IPA, the other two were not. The non-IPA runs have held up fine, but we are getting oxidation in the IPA cans, with inconsistent levels. Some were fine, some were heavily oxidized by 14 days, and some in between. The IPA was also our very first run; our next runs were non-IPA and went more smoothly as we were more accustomed to the setup.
I am thinking about doing two cans at a time instead of four for IPA, and keeping our beer gun hooked up to CO2 to fill the headspace just prior to seaming.
If anyone has any experience making a system like this work, or any feedback on how to optimize this setup I would greatly appreciate it.
I like this setup because it is easy to run, it cranks 4-packs out at a fairly quick pace, and of course, I've already spent the money purchasing it. So I'm hoping for advice on how to use this setup first and foremost. Would it be better to utilize the counter-pressure? Anything I'm overlooking?
Thanks
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