Kegging a Kolsch and new Beer Gun?

Today was a good rainy day outside so that's usually a good time to do inside brewing work. I had originally planned on making my all Chinook IPA this weekend but the weather was quite prohibitive with that dealing us 2 days of rain. This afternoon has cleared slightly but I really don't like starting batches so late in the day as it interferes with dinner and bedtime with the kids. I had plenty to keep me busy today though.

First up was kegging up the Kolsch. It's been a few weeks in primary and after some consistant gravity readings around 1.015/1/014 it was surely finished. Sitting in the cold fridge will do it some good over the coming weeks. The color came out fine as expected and there is some slight hop bitterness I didn't expect. It's not overpowering or really detracting from the beer but it's there which is nice. I think once carbonated this will be a crowd pleaser and will go quickly. Here is a pic of the finished beer kegging up. It looks muddy but some lagering in the fridge will clear it right up and drop most of that yeast out of suspension.

There is the Duclaw Brewing Company HERO contest upcoming in a few weeks so I am starting to get these beers ready for bottling. I was reading on the Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum that you can take a bottling wand (cheap plastic one) and shove it into the end of a picnic tap and that works as a cheap and easy beer gun. Thought I'd give it a try today since I have a picnic tap sitting around doing nothing. I have to say, it works really.....really....really well. I tested just with sanitizer from a keg and ran it into a glass growler. It filled quickly and had little to no foam. I relieved the pressure valve on the keg and turned the gas to about 2 psi which is just enough to push the beer out. I will be using this shortly on the porter and will bottle that up. Entries are due in under a month here so I wanted to let it age in the leg as much as possible. Problem is, people keep drinking it and liking the beer so I need to bottle it up now before that keg is gone!