Anna's Brewdays

[DocAnna]

And tonight’s music for Sunday roast is Flash dance - proper 80’s feel good accompanied by my Christmas brew (sadly doesn’t seem as good as it did a few weeks ago) Good job youngest daughter is out at swimming as she’d be thoroughly embarrassed by my dancing.
Anna

 

[Clint]

Have you got leg warmers on?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

And tonight’s music for Sunday roast is Flash dance - proper 80’s feel good accompanied by my Christmas brew (sadly doesn’t seem as good as it did a few weeks ago) Good job youngest daughter is out at swimming as she’d be thoroughly embarrassed by my dancing.
Anna

Go on, post a video

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Have you got leg warmers on?

I have.

 

[Buffers brewery]

I have.

 

[Clint]

I have.

..and leotard.

 

[Buffers brewery]

..and leotard.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

..and leotard.

Yep!

 

[Clint]

Yep!

..high heeled patent leather dance shoes?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

..high heeled patent leather dance shoes?

Pervert!

 

[Clint]

Who...? Moi..?

 

[Gerryjo]

..high heeled patent leather dance shoes?

Now don't want you putting any stress on that ticker now...

 

[DocAnna]

Have you got leg warmers on?

Sadly it's been a very long time since I owned any leg warmers!

..high heeled patent leather dance shoes?

Eek and leotards too! Not an image I'd considered of the brewers here

Sorry to disappoint, but it was a jeans and T shirt day, and heels are kept for work days

Anna

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Not an image I'd considered of the brewers here

@Clint sets himself extremely low standards...which he unfortunately fails to achieve!

 

[MickDundee]

I also push my beers on the local trades! Two guys came to do our drive and on their first day they spent half a day prepping and half a day drinking. Needless to say they left the van and got a mate to take them home.

We have cleaners in for an hour once a fortnight. They are a husband/wife team and the husband seems to be a fan of my beers - I use it as a bribe for a job well done.

 

[DocAnna]

Anna's Adventures in Kegging

So it's been just a bit busy over the last week but I finally couldn't put it off any longer, I faced up to the box of interesting tubes and shiny metal things... and tackled kegging

I've been a bit intimidated by the whole scary pressurised cylinder and leaks thing, not to mention connecting up metres of tubing, metal things and kegs. Not to mention that the CO2 cylinder and keg purchases had been a bit of an impulse, a sort of 'seemed like the right thing to do' back in November. I'm blaming you bunch for making it sound simple and that @Hazelwood Brewery for setting the aspirational bar so high! I'm generally fine with electrics since they don't leak, but plumbing and the risk of leaks has always concerned me, not helped by having lived in homes which had some pretty unpleasant water damage events. it's in that context I set to with the box of bits that Jonny had kindly sent from BrewKegTap, together with a sharp craft knife in a friggin freezing garage (4 deg indoors!).

View attachment 38958

Things I've learnt so far:

• I thought 1.5m for gas lines from the cylinder and to the kegs might be too short... nope it's probably too long.
• That thing that splits the gas into 4 outputs is called a manifold... who knew...not a silver thingy with red bits, which is how I still think of it.
• Attaching the regulator to the cylinder needs the white washer to be attached to the regulator first, if not it leaks lots loudly.
• You need really quite a big spanner and to feel a bit brave to tighten up the regulator.
• Yes the CO2 pressure is scary when you turn it on to flush the outlet, loud and a bit eeek!
• John Guest push fittings are officially the coolest thing . Oh wow I really like these, and I found out you don't need to tape the screw joints.

One of the things that has helped was spending some time learning to move sanitiser solution around keg to keg using pressure and connected beer lines before filling a keg with beer. This has the benefit of sanitising a couple of kegs and it's quite fun and feels like a very grown up water toy with foam and bubbles.. well apart from it being friggin freezing (yes I know I've already said that - it was really cold!)

So after I'd played with the foam for long enough I siphoned the long waiting fermenter full of Nelson Sauvin pale ale into it's new home, attached a gas line and set my carbonation pressure to 10psi. Checked all the joints and no leaks found, tidied up and retreated to the kitchen with my frozen fingers... which turned out to be a bit of an advantage since I was making pastry for a quiche for dinner and there was next to no risk I was going to melt the butter. (It turned out a rather lovely short crust despite having to improvise with wholemeal flour and a bit of self raising after discovering I didn't have enough plain flour). Yes kegging is a lot lot faster than bottling, I did have about four 500ml bottles worth left over which I'm afraid I just bottle primed with a very approximate teaspoon of dextrose each. Rather interestingly the FG was 1.009 so overshot a bit on the attenuation but not by too much. It tastes nice even now despite having been cold crashed for several weeks at 2 deg C while waiting for me to extract my digit and get on with moving it in to a keg.

I do have one lingering question, well one at the moment anyway. The pressure on the regulator seems to suggest the cylinder is almost empty as shown in the picture. It still feels really heavy and I hadn't opened it till Sunday and it's not gone down since other than a tiny bit with the exploits with the Chemsan. Have I done something wrong or should I be going back to the supplier about this?

Anna

 

[DocAnna]

In other news...

I finally got round to bottling the plum wine, it's still a teeny bit hazy but an awful lot better than before and it's a consistent haze so I guess it's pectin. This is of course wholly on purpose and I'm going to make a label calling it Hazy plum just to make it sound like it was planned like this. It also tastes quite a bit better than it did, still a bit sharp and sadly the sulphites are still noticeable but I'm hoping another few months should improve that. 32 bottles of strong plum wine, it had really better eventually improve!

Anna

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Anna's Adventures in Kegging

So it's been just a bit busy over the last week but I finally couldn't put it off any longer, I faced up to the box of interesting tubes and shiny metal things... and tackled kegging

I've been a bit intimidated by the whole scary pressurised cylinder and leaks thing, not to mention connecting up metres of tubing, metal things and kegs. Not to mention that the CO2 cylinder and keg purchases had been a bit of an impulse, a sort of 'seemed like the right thing to do' back in November. I'm blaming you bunch for making it sound simple and that @Hazelwood Brewery for setting the aspirational bar so high! I'm generally fine with electrics since they don't leak, but plumbing and the risk of leaks has always concerned me, not helped by having lived in homes which had some pretty unpleasant water damage events. it's in that context I set to with the box of bits that Jonny had kindly sent from BrewKegTap, together with a sharp craft knife in a friggin freezing garage (4 deg indoors!).

View attachment 38958View attachment 38960
Things I've learnt so far:

• I thought 1.5m for gas lines from the cylinder and to the kegs might be too short... nope it's probably too long.
• That thing that splits the gas into 4 outputs is called a manifold... who knew...not a silver thingy with red bits, which is how I still think of it.
• Attaching the regulator to the cylinder needs the white washer to be attached to the regulator first, if not it leaks lots loudly.
• You need really quite a big spanner and to feel a bit brave to tighten up the regulator.
• Yes the CO2 pressure is scary when you turn it on to flush the outlet, loud and a bit eeek!
• John Guest push fittings are officially the coolest thing . Oh wow I really like these, and I found out you don't need to tape the screw joints.

One of the things that has helped was spending some time learning to move sanitiser solution around keg to keg using pressure and connected beer lines before filling a keg with beer. This has the benefit of sanitising a couple of kegs and it's quite fun and feels like a very grown up water toy with foam and bubbles.. well apart from it being friggin freezing (yes I know I've already said that - it was really cold!)
View attachment 38961

So after I'd played with the foam for long enough I siphoned the long waiting fermenter full of Nelson Sauvin pale ale into it's new home, attached a gas line and set my carbonation pressure to 10psi. Checked all the joints and no leaks found, tidied up and retreated to the kitchen with my frozen fingers... which turned out to be a bit of an advantage since I was making pastry for a quiche for dinner and there was next to no risk I was going to melt the butter. (It turned out a rather lovely short crust despite having to improvise with wholemeal flour and a bit of self raising after discovering I didn't have enough plain flour). Yes kegging is a lot lot faster than bottling, I did have about four 500ml bottles worth left over which I'm afraid I just bottle primed with a very approximate teaspoon of dextrose each. Rather interestingly the FG was 1.009 so overshot a bit on the attenuation but not by too much. It tastes nice even now despite having been cold crashed for several weeks at 2 deg C while waiting for me to extract my digit and get on with moving it in to a keg.

I do have one lingering question, well one at the moment anyway. The pressure on the regulator seems to suggest the cylinder is almost empty as shown in the picture. It still feels really heavy and I hadn't opened it till Sunday and it's not gone down since other than a tiny bit with the exploits with the Chemsan. Have I done something wrong or should I be going back to the supplier about this?

View attachment 38962

Anna

Gave me a giggle

The bottle pressure looks very low (my 6Kg bottle is 500psi) which makes me question wether the needle has gone “round the clock”. You can maybe test this by turning off the gas feed to your manifold (or close all the manifold taps) and turn off the CO2 bottle - then very gently pull on the pressure release valve on the regulator. Watch the needle on your gauge as you do this and see if if just drops to zero or goes all the way round.

Remember to turn the bottle back on and open the feed/manifold valves!

 

[Brew_DD2]

Don't worry about the gauge too much. Definitely go on keg weight. The gauge which shows cylinder pressure fluctuates with temperature. The neck of your cylinder should have a tare weight. Subtract that off the actual weight of the cylinder and you'll find out how much CO2 you have.

Happy kegging!

 

[Horners]

Don't worry about the gauge too much. Definitely go on keg weight. The gauge which shows cylinder pressure fluctuates with temperature. The neck of your cylinder should have a tare weight. Subtract that off the actual weight of the cylinder and you'll find out how much CO2 you have.

Happy kegging!

Nice one @Brew_DD2 - I had never spotted the tare before. I am going to do that also as my gauge also jumps around all over the place.