Best Ways to Fill a Growler: Step-By-Step Instructions
Posted by Ron on 30th Aug 2021
When dealing with draught beer, the most overlooked skill is how to fill a growler. Serving growler beer is a great way to let consumers enjoy fresh draught beer off-premise. Not everyone has discovered the sheer awesomeness of beer growlers, but first, we have to address filling a growler.
How to Fill a Growler?
There are a handful of ways to fill a growler. You can fill it from a keg, a picnic tap, or using a growler filling station which is recommended for bars and tap rooms. But how exactly do you do it?
Rule #1 is you should never fill the growler directly from the faucet - always use a piece of compatible PVC tubing. As a growler is filled, CO2 breaks out quickly and causes your beer to foam over, resulting in beer loss.
Most growlers are marked with a fill line to reference where enough headspace is left.
Another extremely important thing is sanitizing all your equipment and containers - that includes growlers, caps, and fill hoses/tubing. Make sure to rinse them with water, sanitize them, then rinse once again before every use. These rules will help you fill a growler from a keg the right way.
Beer growlers are an easy way to take your favorite beer anywhere you want and enjoy it in its freshest form. If you happen to be a pub/bar owner, you might leverage this and offer your patrons something really special like they do at the LCBO, well-known growler fillers operating in Ontario, Canada.
Tips for a Perfect Growler
If you want to know how to fill up a growler, here are the basic steps. The filling process starts with rinsing the growler. A quick rinse with fresh water ensures there is no cleaning solution or debris left inside.
The next step is taking both the growler and the cap and dipping them into food-grade sanitizer. Sanitizing the growler on the inside and the outside helps to get rid of nasty bacteria, mold, or any other type of potentially harmful residue. This is an important step in health and food safety.
Once the growler has been sanitized, give it another rinse to remove the sanitizer. The next step is purging the growler with CO2, which will push out any oxygen that can affect the flavor of the beer. This will help to fill a growler without foam and avoid any oxidation.
Finally, take a pre-sanitized fill hose, attach it to the tap tower, and fill the growler from the tap until you reach the right volume level and a little bit of foam coming out of the top for the best way to fill a growler. After that, all you have to do is cap it to seal the container and then rinse it with water one last time.
Starting a Growler Fill Station
Filling a growler from a keg using a piece of PVC tubing is great for home use, but it’s not ideal for a serious beer establishment that’s looking to provide its customers with various types of draught beer for takeaway. That’s where a growler filling station comes in.
This device is designed to fill growlers with beer without letting oxygen in, so it stays foam-free and fresh for a few weeks - a great incentive for your customers. Despite sounding rather menacing, growler filling stations are, in fact, quite compact and easy to operate and maintain.
Starting a growler fill station is easier than you might think, and the growler fill station start-up costs are not as high. Once you invest in a filling station your patrons will savour your freshly filled growlers with everyone.
Bar owners and customers love that beer growlers are eco-friendly both in terms of energy consumption and reusability.