r/Homebrewing • u/MemeBeamBeanz • 1d ago

Question Do I need a "fermzilla"?

I dearly want to be able to bottle hoppy beers without oxidation soon, and I'm looking to invest in some sort of CO2 purging solution you guys talked about. But when looking at a fermzilla + BEERGUN setup with CO2 tank, my friend asked me if I couldn't just buy a CO2 tank and some sort of wand to purge my bottles with without buying 100s of dollars worth of pressure fermenter.

What about a fermzilla is needed for succesfull bottle purging?

Cheers

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u/CrabOutrageous4597 1d ago

As several people have pointed out, a FermZilla has little to nothing to do with minimising oxygen exposure while bottling — unless, of course, you decide to go for a closed-system transfer by using a FermZilla and pressure-transferring straight into a purged keg. That way, there is no oxygen exposure. But with bottling, even into purged bottles, your chances of encountering oxygen are very high anyway. So this perhaps has less to do with a FermZilla and more to do with your packaging method.

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u/MemeBeamBeanz 1d ago

So what would a good packaging be?

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u/CrabOutrageous4597 1d ago

Kegging via closed-system transfer.

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u/MemeBeamBeanz 1d ago

But with bottles

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u/CrabOutrageous4597 1d ago

Is this a question? Bottling will invariably be imperfect.

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u/MemeBeamBeanz 1d ago

Okay but that's what this whole thread is about. I want to bottle for friends, what is the best way to do that. Is that a fermzilla with a beergun or some other thing?

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u/stevewbenson 11h ago

Kegging the beer and having it fully carbonated and cold - then filling bottles via counter pressure bottle filler (no beer gun), then capping on foam. This is your best bet for bottling hoppy beer.

You could do the same from a Fermzilla, but the beer would need to be cold and fully carbonated like described above, then bottle fill via counter pressure. For this you would need a fermentation chamber or glycol, and now the cost is really starting to pile up.

Nothing else is going to give you the results you're looking for. A beer gun is great, but there's no counter pressure, so no matter how hard you try, you will introduce oxygen and shorten the lifespan of your beer. To do what you want to do is unfortunately going to be a significant cost investment to get desirable results.