I was able to barter myself into a 16gallon keg to convert into a brew kettle. This is going to be pretty fun, I have a couple ideas to begin with. A progression, if you will.

First I’m going to try my dremmel, then I’ll move up to the angle grinder with a jig someone sent a link to. If those don’t work, I’ll go on to the recip’saw.

On the brewing front, I still have two kits I need to cook up. Things have been kind of crazy in the brewdad house with the flu, pneumonia, sick dog, replacing a car and buying a boat in the last few weeks. Its all fun, but makes blogging a bit more dicey!

I will be documenting the progression of the conversion here. I also need to write up the drip tray build. Lots of things to do, now to find the time!

Cheers,
Tony

My in laws were over last night after my daughter’s dance recital. At one point my father in law asked why I only had one beer on tap. I said “What?!? Both should be up.” Sure enough the ESB wasn’t pouring. Not even a gasp or gurgle came out of the faucet.

It was pretty obvious what was wrong once I opened the kegerator door. When I put the Furious clone in, the beer line for the ESB got tucked behind the keg, right up against the cooling plate at the back of the fridge. A foot or so of frozen beer. Nothing is getting by that until it thawed. Thankfully with a little persistence, we were able to get the beer flowing again.

The lesson learned this time around is watch where the beer lines are!

Cheers,
Tony

I was recently asked what is involved in getting  a stout faucet running with beer gas. Unlike standard faucets that simply pour beer out and rely on the tubing for restriction of pressure, a stout faucet has a restriction plate and flow director inside. Length of tubing just doesn’t matter when using a stout faucet with beer gas. This is a great feature considering I certainly wouldn’t want to switch out tubing whenever I want to put a keg on with the stout faucet.

There is less overall gas inside a cylinder of beer gas than in a regular CO2 cylinder, and it is more expensive. I like to pre-charge my keg with 10-15psi of CO2 for a couple of days before switching to the beer gas. This will result in finer cascading more quickly. Yes, simply connecting the beer gas to the keg will give the same end result, but it will just take longer. I’m all about getting it done quickly.

With my system, I like to put the beer gas pressure at 25-30psi. This pushes enough CO2 into the beer and makes for an amazing creamy head coming through the faucet.

There really is less to worry about using the stout faucet: no balancing pressure to flow!

Cheers!
Tony

I wrote about the time waster that is My Brute last week or so ago. As an update, my main brute, Farkler, has started a clan. The Naptime Warriors!

This is such a fun, time wasting game if you haven’t tried it yet, you should!

Incidentally, and this is actually beer related, I stopped at Midwest this morning to pick two more kits. It was supposed to be a recon mission to cipher on going all grain, but instead I bought an Irish  stout and a lemon coriander weiss.

Cheers!
Tony

Imagine my surprise when my keg of IIPA gurgled at me just now! That’s right, the beer that only I would drink found itself drank. This has to be a record for my beers though, as this one lasted well over a month.

Its a good thing that Surly Furious clone is ready to go!

By the bye, the watered ESB isn’t as bad as I thought. I may add a bit more, actually.

Cheers!
Tony

After much pressure I have added half a gallon of water to the keg of ESB to try and get it more drinkable. I may add another half gallon depending on the results.

This unfortunate turn of events may be precipitated by my not strictly measuring the resulting volumes of my beers. It has been happening that the keg doesn’t look as full as it should be after racking out of secondary.

Has anyone else had to add water to a finished beer?

Cheers,
Tony