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

[Oneflewover]

They caught me admiring a pint of TT Landord and wanted me to look at them the same way!

Both? At the same time?

 

[KegThat]

Cornies

 

[terrym]

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.

Hows this then, and this is not slightly tongue in cheek, since I am known for slagging off 'cheap' PBS....
1. I haven't got a brew fridge
2. I dont spend hours calibrating equipment (I havent got much complicated stuff)
3. Don't spend days preparing a water treatment schedule.
And there's no need for me to go on because my approach to brewing is quite simple

And I know all about prepping PBs, for what its worth I wrote the Forum Guide. As for leaks and from where they come from, I have had bodies that split on the seams, bodies with pinhole leaks, both rendering the PB useless, let alone caps that split. Finding a leak from a gasket (which shouldn't happen if you prepped the PB) is in fact relatively easy if you use the soapy water test.

So when I buy something and look after it (especially since in this case I never overpressurised my PBs) I don't expect it to fail on me so that its unusable after two years of limited use, as has happened to me with four out of four PBs.

And that is the reason I slag them off, justifiably so, because they are not really fit for purpose, and really shouldn't need endless fettling and fiddling and keeping 20 litres of bottles on standby in case the PB fails. And certainly nothing to do with anything else.

Therefore I dont get your point at all.

 

[kelper]

What do corny keg people vote for?

I added that to the poll, just for you.

 

[Joust]

I added that to the poll, just for you.

I'm special!

 

[kelper]

I'm special!

Special Ed !!!

 

[foxy]

Complete waste of money, if you want a cask ale with gravity pour get a cube, cheap as chips, easy to use and carb up. I would still like to hear back from the guy who used a franger to keep the pressure in the barrel with the bicycle pump.

 

[WrexTheDragon]

King Keg and some bottles. I have to say that the pint from the king keg is far better than the bottles. I put this down to conditioning is easier in the keg.

 

[Shominy]

Complete waste of money, if you want a cask ale with gravity pour get a cube, cheap as chips, easy to use and carb up. I would still like to hear back from the guy who used a franger to keep the pressure in the barrel with the bicycle pump.

I've done some looking into getting a beer engine at some point and have seen people using the cheap bag in boxes. Is that what you're on about or something else? I'd be interested to see how well they fair.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

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.

 

[starseeker]

They caught me admiring a pint of TT Landord and wanted me to look at them the same way!

I thought that even living in the highlands ,that it was illegal to have two wives ? As for the mental state of a man who wants two wives ,that is a whole new ballgame :)

 

[The Cat]

I thought that even living in the highlands ,that it was illegal to have two wives ? As for the mental state of a man who wants two wives ,that is a whole new ballgame :)

I am happily divorced now but back when I was married I remember my wife suggesting I was having an affair for some reason. I simply replied you're crazy I can't keep one woman happy never mind trying two.

 

[kelper]

Anyone in Scotland can legally have as many wives as he wishes. But the sentence is consecutive, not concurrent.

 

[chthon]

Damn it, Jim, I am a brewer, not a plumber!

 

[Gerry99]

I use cornie kegs filled to approximately 18litres. I usually bottle the reminder of the brew. I have real bother getting the gas right in the keg. Bottles are always a bit gassier and I prefer the smoother taste of the draft beer.

 

[VW911]

Bottle most, Keg some. Depends on what it is, but sometimes do a "half and half".
Mainly because I can fit a little 2 gallon PB in the fridge in the camper van without too much grief from the boss!!!

 

[kelper]

Cornies

Better change your name to CorneliusThat.com!

 

[Loonytoone]

I wonder if a lot of the issues some people have with King Kegs is not troubleshooting leaks properly then over tightening the cap and compounding the issue by over pressurising.
I have to say my KKs are trouble free.

 

[welshfella]

I've just watched a review of a nitro brew coffee maker and it appears to be very much like the mini keg co2 dispensers are they any different other than one uses 8g co2 bulbs and the other nitrogen bulbs? I'm trying to work out how they justify charging £160 for the coffee maker.

 

[terrym]

I wonder if a lot of the issues some people have with King Kegs is not troubleshooting leaks properly then over tightening the cap and compounding the issue by over pressurising.
I have to say my KKs are trouble free.

You could well be right. But perhaps the question you should asking is why should it be necessary to be regularly carrying out (or avoiding) any of those issues on something as low tech as a PB. In comparison I have a breadmaker which is slightly more technically advanced only cost a little more than a PB, and its been used 3-4 times a week for 5 years and all that happens to that is the ingredients go in, we plug it in, press some buttons, and a few hours later we get a loaf. And all we have to do then is to wash out the bread tin. There must be many other similar examples.