An empty keg is often the best indicator sign of a terrific party. 

That is why there are few things that are as sad as a half-full keg on a Sunday morning. 

The half-full keg reminds you that your old volleyball pals have moved away, that Alex and Sarah aren't drinking anymore and that you wasted good money on too much beer. You'll have to pump and dump the leftovers down the kitchen sink, or return the keg half-full to BevMo and suffer employee stares as they realize you have more money than friends. 

Instead of treating this awkward leftover as a millstone of failure, perhaps it could be converted to a bounty of cheap beer.

As luck would have it, Sue had just given me some beer-making supplies, including empty 22 oz. beer bottles, bottlecaps and a bottlecapper. Could I re-package the beer, allowing it to live for another Saturday?

Yes! I could! 

In an effort to diffuse the foam before the beer went into the bottles, I tried decanting the beer into a pitcher first.

If I had been trying to obtain as much beer foam as possible. This would have been considered a total success.

Bottling the leftover beer from within the keg was innovative, but I don't recommend extending this reclamation attempt to the orphaned cups of beer from the party.

Unless you use a strainer to catch food particles, cigarette butts, and gum.

I had filled 13 bottles of beer when the keg gave its last wheeze. It hadn't been half-full after all!

The two-handed bottlecapper was a snap to use. I pressed new bottlecaps onto my bottles.

Good as new, and airtight!

Leftover beer anyone?

The keg was empty and ready to be returned to the store. I had rescued13 bottles of beer. Does that make me a hero? Not any more of a hero than that guy that saved that kid on the subway tracks in New York City, but probably his equal.

Two gallons of beer from a keg of beer is only worth about $12. But by bottling it, I was looking at a value-added bounty of at least $30 worth of beer!

Maybe I could start my own party-over bottling company, visiting less-than-raging parties and recycling their dregs into cases of real fridge-friendly beer bottles.

It will be like the liquid version of Senior Gleaners!

All that remained was to try the results. Would the beer taste alright, or was the last 1/3rd of a keg actually just backwash?

The following weekend, I sat down with some friends for the taste test.

It was a leeettle flat.

Ok. Totally flat.

Bottling the beer hadn't saved the fizz. I guess the CO2 had escaped from the leftover beer either in the keg or during the foam show when I was bottling.

The experiment was a bust, but I'm not giving up. 

Next time I'm just going to get a keg of Cognac.