Kegging starter kits. Good value?

[foxbat]

I manage most of the year without any active chilling as my kegs sit in a well shaded out house that abuts onto the back of the kitchen, But come summer i need a shelf chiller to pipe the beer through as otherwise its foam city..
And i need to adjust the serving pressure and vent before most sessions to accommodate changes in the weather, and mid winter EVERYTHING IS FIZZY, and by the end of spring its tricky to contain highly conditioned brews..
A brewfridge if you have the room is a godsend, unfortunately they have yet to make one 34cm wide

My brewfridge is too small to take a keg, unfortunately. The keg will be in our house's integrated garage. It's a good shady place that never receives direct sunlight but ambient temperature is what it is and so I may go back to bottling for the summer brew. What temperature does it reach in summer in your outhouse?

So depending on the style of beer your after pouring you may want to look into investing in a short length of microbore..

90% of what I brew will be ale and I favour a carbonation volume of 1.9 - 2.0 vols which is at the low end of the pressure scale. In winter though I'll do a lager at 2.3 vols. I don't particularly enjoy the sharper mouthfeel of a gassy beer and much prefer the softer feel of a cask ale.

That was a great post by the way and gives me a lot to think about.

 

[Drunkula]

Hmmm...so how do pubs manage to serve lots of beer at the same time with what seems like minimal fuss?

By having one of these things going to every tap, or flow control taps. If you change the carbonation level, so pressure, of the beer going to the tap then you adjust the controller, not change out lengths of choker line.

Serving pressure is different depending on the beer style and at the same temperature you'd put a lot more pressure on a lager than an ale, so that's why you have secondary regulators. If you were just using one regulator and a manifold then all your beers would eventually have the same level of carbonation.

 

[Fil]

fwiw my beer cellar:

with a flat floor poured the washing machine went back in and the gap to the side was checked...

insulation..

i used a diy composite of bubblewrap and mylar to insulate the side walls, as i had 11mm to insulate and clad due to the width restiction.. i dont want the kegs touching the washing machine during a spin..

clad with 3mm marine ply

chiller plumbed in and 4 kegs on tap..

the roof has 6" of polystirene insulation, the back wall 4" and its north facing (doors open t the north)
So it gets the long summer afternoon/evening sun on its backwall/roof and on such days it reaches the ambient temp inside.

running the shelf chiller takes 30-40 mins to chill the waterbath down to 0c at which point it can be turned off for the evening and will retain ample chill for my personal beers..

but everything is flatish mid summer and come winter everything is Very fizzy..

 

[ITMA]

Timely thread this, everytime I start researching this I get overwhelmed and go and have a beer. From a bottle.

Watching with interest but post #9 looks like a great starting place for a shopping basket.

 

[foxbat]

Before I fork out over 100 quid to Adams Gas, does anyone know of a supplier of the 6.35kg CO2 bottles in the Colchester/Chelmsford area with no rental (BOC) and no decaying deposit (Gas UK)? I'm expecting to hear tumbleweed but thought I'd ask anyway.

 

[chewie]

Hmmm...so how do pubs manage to serve lots of beer at the same time with what seems like minimal fuss?

I can't speak for every setup but the place i part time (sports and social club) in has 11 taps split over two bars, there are 2 gas supplies a lager/ale mixed gas and a guinness mixed gas, every keg has a beer buoy (anti fobbing valve) connected directly after the keg in our cold room, from there they go to a chiller and then directly to tap. One gas tank does 9 ale/lager taps using a single reg, the guinness gas tank does two taps again thru a single reg, these are both at around 5 psi serving pressure.
When a keg runs empty the beer buoy will shut it of preventing fobbing when the next keg is hooked up, this means you can keep serving pints with no massive foaming occurring as the new kegs get pulled thru, years ago you would have had to of waited for a barman to fill 3 or 4 pints of foam before the beer would run clean again. All carbonation is done by the breweries, so higher fizz in lagers and less in the ale, whether they zero the keg pressure or leave it at about 5psi i can't be sure on, they would not leave it for individual premises to do though, the serving pressure is exactly the same with that kind of setup as this is only to push beer out of kegs.

 

[pms67]

Its a bit of a faf when setting up, and involves 2 more jg fittings (2 x 3/8" to 3/16" adaptors) and a length of upto about 2m of 3.16" mircobore line.

Not all flow control taps are equal, and most are fine at lower pressures - upto 6-8psi in the keg (Mine @ 8psi(by my reg) and higher are impossible to set at the sweet spot requiering a fiddle every pint) but @6psi and lower (ideal for bittres and ales with a low to medium level of condition) they are a dream,, For the more lively pints lagers and in my case more often than not a ginger beer served @ upto 15psi i use the simple microbore solution for serving.

the goal is a nominal 1-2psi pressure difference at the tap/release point as a higher difference can stimulate a foam out..

I manage most of the year without any active chilling as my kegs sit in a well shaded out house that abuts onto the back of the kitchen, But come summer i need a shelf chiller to pipe the beer through as otherwise its foam city..
And i need to adjust the serving pressure and vent before most sessions to accommodate changes in the weather, and mid winter EVERYTHING IS FIZZY, and by the end of spring its tricky to contain highly conditioned brews..
A brewfridge if you have the room is a godsend, unfortunately they have yet to make one 34cm wide

So depending on the style of beer your after pouring you may want to look into investing in a short length of microbore..
The reason its a bit of a faf is that the metrics are all a bit fluffy, at the low pressures we are talking about reading regulators with gauges intended for larger pressures can be a bit of a challenge, but iirc the metrics are that the microbore line will reduce pressure by one to two psi per foot length, closer to one ps1 to start with growing exponentially or logarithmically with each further foot till about 20feet when its closer to 2 psi restriction per foot length.

So if your pour is just too slow with your first best guess at how many feet to use,
you just need to decouple the keg open the tap to release the pressure and lob off a bit more length..

Also be mindful to use a sharp blade and cut beerline square, dont be tempted to use scissors or shears as they will deform before cutting and the resulting cut can create neucleation points when inserted in jg fittings to stimulate a foam out in the beer line before the tap point is reached.

Ooooooft
Think I will stick to bottling!!!! :bow:

 

[foxbat]

I got my CO2 yesterday from Adams Gas via MBA near Bury St Edmonds. £77.56 for deposit and first fill. It'll be £22.56 for each fill after that which I'm happy with. Marc's a good guy and if you need gas in Essex/Suffolk it's worth the drive up there.

I spent most of yesterday evening tracking down leaks but I think it's finally holding pressure. I have one question about whether the last leak I found is to be expected or not because It was somewhere on the regulator. This is it:

If I start turning the red regulation knob starting back as far "off" as it will go then there is a lot of loose travel followed by an obvious tightening and then gas starts to flow. If I leave the knob wound back in the "loose" zone then I get a slow leak. No idea where it's coming out of despite a soaking with Starsan. If I leave the knob in the "tight" zone then it maintains keg pressure with the gas shut off at the cylinder. This one caused a few hours of frustration. Is it expected by design do you think?

 

[Fil]

my experience is limited to a basic welders reg and my britvic 3reg board, Neither of which leak gas when turned down/off.. and both close with a positive termination (no loose turns !!)

I would be on the phone to the supplier pronto myself...

my limited understanding is that there are 2 dished discs which are compressed/released to close/open the gas flow, loose turns sounds like a dodgy thread on the closing mechanism..

 

[xozzx]

Ive started looking into kegging too but my first hurdle is the CO2. I found this from BOC, it looks to me you buy a full bottle £27 + £15 collection charge, then when its empty pay the same again to swap it out. This makes it £42 per fill, or once I get the bottle I could try to find somewhere else to fill it.

Does that look right?
Does anyone have any better ideas? I live near Aberdeen so if anyone knows a good supplier Id love to know.
Roughly how long/ how many brews would 1 x 6.4Kg cylinder last?

Im also looking into dual body regulators, any recommendations?

Cheers, and Ill be back soon with a load more questions ;-) Cant stand bottling much longer.....

 

[Zephyr259]

There's a homebrew meet-up in brewdog in town at the end of every month, some of those guys keg, i think it's a closed group on facebook but I'll ask then about where they get their CO2 and prices. Think it is BOC.

 

[xozzx]

There's a homebrew meet-up in brewdog in town at the end of every month,

Anyone got a link to this? Id love to go along...

 

[Zephyr259]

Two responses thus far:

"I use hobbyweld. Upfront costs are a bit higher, but hopefully it'll be a saving in the long term. I think I paid £30 for a 6.3kg cannister, plus £60 deposit. It'll cost £30 to refill. I'm not sure how long it'll last, though i'm on my 10th keg now and it's still going. I'm not very frugal with gas, purge kegs before use, etc, so that's good going so far"

"I use BOC at Aberdeen, £27 is just for the gas, never paid a collection charge? The cylinder remains the property of BOC and you pay £3 a month rental on it, but then you don`t have any maintenance costs for the cylinder. My last one lasted around 10 months of reasonable use. It was a 6.35Kg cannister."

It's held at the smaller pub on gallowgate last Sunday of the month, @rats_eyes gave me the details back in January and I should be along this month again. I can't remember the time, want to say 3pm? - Just checked and 3pm is correct.

 

[rats_eyes]

Two responses thus far:

"I use hobbyweld. Upfront costs are a bit higher, but hopefully it'll be a saving in the long term. I think I paid £30 for a 6.3kg cannister, plus £60 deposit. It'll cost £30 to refill. I'm not sure how long it'll last, though i'm on my 10th keg now and it's still going. I'm not very frugal with gas, purge kegs before use, etc, so that's good going so far"

"I use BOC at Aberdeen, £27 is just for the gas, never paid a collection charge? The cylinder remains the property of BOC and you pay £3 a month rental on it, but then you don`t have any maintenance costs for the cylinder. My last one lasted around 10 months of reasonable use. It was a 6.35Kg cannister."

It's held at the smaller pub on gallowgate last Sunday of the month, @rats_eyes gave me the details back in January and I should be along this month again. I can't remember the time, want to say 3pm? - Just checked and 3pm is correct.

@xozzx i'd strongly advise coming along, it's a great way to get feedback on your brews and new ideas. Bring some of your beer too!

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

 

[foxbat]

Ive started looking into kegging too but my first hurdle is the CO2. I found this from BOC, it looks to me you buy a full bottle £27 + £15 collection charge, then when its empty pay the same again to swap it out. This makes it £42 per fill, or once I get the bottle I could try to find somewhere else to fill it.

Have you tried Adams Gas? They have stockists all over the country. If you get a cylinder on a deposit basis then I think you're banned from having it filled by anyone else. It certainly says that in big letters on the cylinder I got from Adams Gas.

 

[xozzx]

Great, thanks for the help, Ill consider which to go for.

It's held at the smaller pub on gallowgate last Sunday of the month, @rats_eyes gave me the details back in January and I should be along this month again. I can't remember the time, want to say 3pm? - Just checked and 3pm is correct.

Do people bring along bottles of their own brew? Ive a few good ones now I could take along. Ill try to make it this month.

 

[xozzx]

Ha, answer given before I posted ;-) Cheers rats-eyes

 

[rats_eyes]

Great, thanks for the help, Ill consider which to go for.



Do people bring along bottles of their own brew? Ive a few good ones now I could take along. Ill try to make it this month.

We take our own brew along to share. The bar actively encourage this as long as we buy a few pints and don't take the piss. It's a pretty good arrangement really. I look forward to trying your beer!

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

 

[Zephyr259]

Indeed, I'll look forward to it as well. I don't have a whisky tasting the night before this one and will have been back on days for a week so I shouldn't be feeling as fragile as last time. :-)

 

[Bigcol49]

If I leave the knob wound back in the "loose" zone then I get a slow leak.

Hi!
I've just read your post - are you still getting a leak?
How do you know it's leaking?