Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

Seeing how I am so new to the kegging scene, I am wondering what is the best way to get kegged beer to the tasting at Evans on Saturday.  I have read that just trying to put it in bottles is hard, due to the foam, and I don't have a counter pressure filler.  I am curious to see what others recommend.  I have read that you can chill the bottles and super chill the keg and just fill the beer like normal, but I have not tried it.  Help.

I usually fill a glass growler (I have both a half-gallon and gallon jug for this purpose).  No fancy equipment or anything.  I don't even pre-chill it.  It doesn't have to last long as I'm just taking it to a party or over a friend's house.  Assuming you pour it right (running down the side), it won't foam too badly and it will stay carbonated and tasting pretty fresh for about a day. In my experience, I have noticed VERY subtle flavor changes (not oxidation but esters may be accentuated and/or hop bitterness seems a bit mellowed), but by and large the flavor stays pretty darn close to tap. 

I don't have a growler, but I have a couple of large swing-top (Grolsch-style) bottles, do you think they would work?  They do have the traditional beer bottle narrow neck and opening, but I think my tap would pour into them, but the opening might be a little narrow.

I don't see why that wouldn't work.  Last year I bought a gallon of apple juice from Whole Foods to make a cider. Bonus: I got a gallon glass jug that I use to transport beer in! Not a bad deal for $6!  I've even had beer poured from a keg into plastic bottles with screw caps. Personally, I'd be more hesitant to do this because of plastic permeability and sanitation, but I have to say that the beer I drank from them tasted quite good.

The guys over at Homebrewtalk.com have a way to bottle from picnic taps with no extra equipment except a #2 stopper.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=24678

That is a pretty cool idea, thanks for posting.

I have found that if you attach clean tubing to your tap and run the tube to the bottom of your bottle or growler it cuts down substantially on the amount of head that is generated when just pumping into the bottle. (You do still have some head formation though)

So I finally got around to building the plastic picnic tap filler that Peter mentioned above, and it works GREAT.  It cost me a total of $3.25 (picnic tap and drilled stopper), as I already had an old racking cane I could chop apart.  It was suprisingly easy to fill the bottles and cap them; it would take about 5 min to do a six-pack.  Thanks for posting, Peter.

That looks like a great way to save some bucks. From the title of your thread there should be a punch-line attached, something lame like "in a car!", or...hmmn. I can't think of anything as non-funny as the last joke. Maybe I can just abscond with Christopher's Beer Gun, then I don't have to go to the trouble of making anything.

Christopher told me that while the beer gun is very easy to use, and looks very cool, it can be a pain to clean all the parts.

As an aside, it takes a bit of getting used to the device I made.  Jamey dropped by before I went on vacation last week to pick up my entries for the fair (thanks Jamey!), and he observed my using the device.  He can add his own observations, but at one point I over filled and the pressure drop when I removed the device from the bottle resulted in a fine spray of beer all over my arms.  Jamey's response "At least you did not hit the ceiling . . . that would be hard to clean."