Do you use pressure barrels or bottles for your home-brewed BEER?

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Do you use pressure barrels or bottles for your home-brewed beer?

  • I mostly or always use a KingKeg pressure barrel

  • I mostly or always use a cheaper brand of pressure barrel

  • I mostly or always bottle it

  • I use pressure barrels and bottles

  • I no longer use KingKegs due to leaks

  • I no longer user cheaper brands of pressure barrel due to leaks

  • I use Cornies!


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I've just finished my first ever brew, a Coopers stout and its turned out superb! I bought a balliihoo king keg and really pleased with it. It comes with a schrader valve fitted to the lid and also comes with a pressure gauge to check its holding pressure they even thinly coated the seal.

That's the exact one I had. Managed to hold pressure but I could not for the life of me get it to dispense anything other than gas and foam. I checked the float was fully submerged in the beer and that there wasn't too much pressure but alas I could not get to the bottom of it. I'm glad you've managed to get yours working as it should. The schrader valve on mine got stuck open at one point as well and when I took it apart it was full of gunk and needed replacing so might be an idea to pick up a little replacement kit in case it happens to you as well.
 
That's the exact one I had. Managed to hold pressure but I could not for the life of me get it to dispense anything other than gas and foam. I checked the float was fully submerged in the beer and that there wasn't too much pressure but alas I could not get to the bottom of it. I'm glad you've managed to get yours working as it should. The schrader valve on mine got stuck open at one point as well and when I took it apart it was full of gunk and needed replacing so might be an idea to pick up a little replacement kit in case it happens to you as well.
I think you just got be lucky buying a PB, a lot of uh
That's the exact one I had. Managed to hold pressure but I could not for the life of me get it to dispense anything other than gas and foam. I checked the float was fully submerged in the beer and that there wasn't too much pressure but alas I could not get to the bottom of it. I'm glad you've managed to get yours working as it should. The schrader valve on mine got stuck open at one point as well and when I took it apart it was full of gunk and needed replacing so might be an idea to pick up a little replacement kit in case it happens to you as well.
I think you just gotta be lucky when buying a PB, seems like a lot of unhappy owners!
 
Does it genuinely taste better if it is bottled? I’m curious to know, I’ve only made one home brew before and I did it in a pressure barrel. If it is worth it, I will use bottles for my next brew.
I use mix of mini kegs and bottles, splitting batches between them. There is a difference in taste but I'm not sure that I can say one is better than the other
 
I've always bottled since I first started brewing with my mate back in 1974, tried a few kegs etc over the years, but overall found bottles to be the most consistent and reliable, ...... and free! Caps £2.50 for 200, bought a decent capping machine, occasionally one might get a chip in the neck, but no great loss. Batch prime rather than prime individual bottles.
 
There are but I don’t know what people are doing wrong. I have 9 bottom tap King Kegs all in continuous use and never have an issue with any. :confused.:

I've definitely read a lot about people favouring the bottom tap style as the top tap can give problems with the float system which is what I believe happened to me. I may test the waters again with a bottom tap but I won't be in any rush. It depends how many bottles I end up with in my garage!
 
I've definitely read a lot about people favouring the bottom tap style as the top tap can give problems with the float system which is what I believe happened to me. I may test the waters again with a bottom tap but I won't be in any rush. It depends how many bottles I end up with in my garage!

I do have 200 bottles as well 🤫
 
Makes me smile.
The people that really slag off cheap pressure barrels for leaking and loosing pressure are the ones that:

Spend hours making brewing fridges,
calibrate and calibrate again temp control equipment because their mash temp may vary 1/2 a degree off what it should be over 5 hrs,
Research for days the chemical makeup of their water, till it's no longer just water,
(I could go on)

But can't or aren't willing to spend half an hour prepping a pressure barrel so it doesn't leak or loose pressure,

Said a bit tongue in cheek but you get my point.
 
Said a bit tongue in cheek but you get my point.
Aye - buggers clean their equipment, use more than a farthing's worth of hops to a barrel, n drink their brews out of glasses rather than thee grandfether's clog like good honest folk.

And have thee seen the amount of yeasts you can get nowadehs? We just used to get mother to sit on a slice of hovis whilst sayint Lord's Prayer and sling that in the rabbit hutch, where everybody brewed their beer. It's not been't same since Boots the Sheathes Chandler started making their cholera-free beer kit range.

Proper ale should make yer teeth hurt as you're supping it and then give you stomach cramps so hard that when you double up in pain all your disks shoot out yer back like clay pigeons. You weren't considered a proper man until you needed a back brace and had headbutted yourself in the John Thomas so hard you had pubes growing out ye forrid.
 
Aye - buggers clean their equipment, use more than a farthing's worth of hops to a barrel, n drink their brews out of glasses rather than thee grandfether's clog like good honest folk.

And have thee seen the amount of yeasts you can get nowadehs? We just used to get mother to sit on a slice of hovis whilst sayint Lord's Prayer and sling that in the rabbit hutch, where everybody brewed their beer. It's not been't same since Boots the Sheathes Chandler started making their cholera-free beer kit range.

Proper ale should make yer teeth hurt as you're supping it and then give you stomach cramps so hard that when you double up in pain all your disks shoot out yer back like clay pigeons. You weren't considered a proper man until you needed a back brace and had headbutted yourself in the John Thomas so hard you had pubes growing out ye forrid.
Said like a true Yorkshireman!
 
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