newbie, split barrel, help please

[kevbearman]

Hi, all ,new here, im on my third attempt at brewing , after leaky tap last time i thought i was all set, put beer in barrel a week ago and now found a puddle on the floor and the barrel has a small split, what should i do? i have been collecting up brown beer bottles, or should i try getting another barrel , if so what is the process, if i bottle do i add sugar? if i re barrel do i just use the tap to transfer? or give up on this one?

thanks,
kev

 

[Tony1951]

Hi Kev.

This happened to me twice. What a pain.

If you want to use the same kind of barrel, get a new one, clean it as usual. Prime the barrel with teh correct amount of sugar as you did before. If it is a full five gallon batch, not more than 80grm of table sugar. Connect a sterilised tube to the tap on the leaking one and put the barrel on a table or work bench. Using a chair or some other lower resting place, put the new barrel below the old one with the tube inside and run the beer into the new barrel. You should probably gently release the pressure from the old barrel so you don't get a load of foaming, and just slacken the lid enough to let the beer flow out without vacuum problems. As is the usual way when transferring finished beer from vessel to vessel, try not to have it splashing about in the air, or falling through air. Seal the lid and place in a warmish (19C - 22C) place for about six days, and you will be back where you were before the disaster.

I have had to do this twice and my beer was perfectly OK, so hopefully you will get away with it.

REALLY annoying problem this. I contacted the supplier of the barrel in one case (Wilko) and they contacted Muntons who sold it to them and Muntons replaced mine and sent a free beer kit as a sweetener. I didn't complain about the first one because I know it had a slight fall when I was moving it in the garage when it was full, and though it bounced and looked OK at the time, I think I may have cracked it.

My second barrel, cracked at the top and had definitely never been damaged or over-pressurised.

I am really only bottling now, though I might do the odd brew for the barrels I have got. They aren't that reliable really in my view. Lost count of how many times I have lost gas from leaking seals. It's a pity because they are really easy to clean and fill.

Hope this is a help.

EDIT:

You could also just bottle the beer if you want. Just prime it with the correct amount of sugar for your taste in carbonation and beer style and transfer it to the bottles and cap them off. I've done that with the last six or seven pints of barrels when they ran out of gas and the beer was if anything better than the stuff that came out of the barrels for serving. In my experience, decent beer is pretty robust when these things happen.

 

[louis macneice]

I've also had one split at the top; on the bend between the neck and the body. It was invisible to the naked eye but meant that the beer couldn't carbonate, and of course presented a contamination risk.

I ditched the barrel (but kept the tap, the lid and pressure valve) and put the beer in a new one with 80grms of fresh priming sugar. It was absolutely fine.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[kevbearman]

thanks for your helpful replies, glad to hear its not just me that has this bad luck, was beginning to give up, maybe ill try a new barrel , wish i just but the bullet and bought a new barrel instead of replacing the tap now,

kev.

 

[terrym]

Hi, all ,new here, im on my third attempt at brewing , after leaky tap last time i thought i was all set, put beer in barrel a week ago and now found a puddle on the floor and the barrel has a small split, what should i do? i have been collecting up brown beer bottles, or should i try getting another barrel , if so what is the process, if i bottle do i add sugar? if i re barrel do i just use the tap to transfer? or give up on this one?

thanks,
kev

If beer is leaking out of your barrel then it is possible that air is leaking in which won't do your beer much good, although this is unlikely especially if the barrel is pressurised and its liquid coming out not gas, but in any case you should be thinking about emptying your barrel.
If you need a 'reservoir' for your beer from the leaking barrel (assuming you haven't got enough glass bottles) you could use 2 litre PET water bottles @ 17 -20p a bottle from a supermarket. If you go this route it's the fizzy water bottles you want not the still water.
I would siphon out of the barrel rather than use the barrel tap to keep air out your beer and use 2tsp sugar per 2 litre bottle. And when you open the barrel lid just make sure there is no pressure inside, perhaps by venting any pressure through the tap.
Whatever you do don't throw any beer away
And PET bottles are fine, I use them in conjunction with PBs to store my beer. Your beer will keep for a few days in the PET bottles after opening, although mine never lasts that long! I also use a serving jug into which I pour my beer before filling my glass which helps.

 

[Tony1951]

Re Terry's remarks ->

If the beer has any pressure left there is no way anything is going back into the barrel. A tiny crack will seep beer outwards and still retain pressure. If Kev's barrel is a full one and has been carbonated, the typical co2 pressure would serve up about half a barrel. Unless he has half a barrel of beer on the floor, nothing is going inwards. That can only happen when he has exhausted all his gas and even then, it would be unlikely that cooling would allow the sucking in of anything through such a tiny crack as he and I have had.

Using the tap AND a tube to pass the beer into another barrel, is safe as long as the cap is loose and air can enter the top. The co2 is heavier than air and always sinks so the beer is covered. In any case, unless someone is frothing the beer about you won't get any problems. Beer is a lot tougher than a lot of folk think. Keep it clean, don't carelessly slosh it through the air and get it into a clean safe bottles or barrel soon, and it will be fine.

Certainly agree that throwing away good beer is the worst possible option. Like I said, I've had this happen twice (cracks) and I also had a few bad seals and I never lost any beer when I had to transfer barrelled beer to bottles or other barrels.

:)

 

[kevbearman]

ok, thanks everyone ,you've been really helpful, im going for bottles now as i have those here ready , not had a chance to get a new barrel today, i have sterilised them and will try bottling, will let you know how it turns out, maybe order a new barrel for next time, i had been looking at a king keg before i decided to replace just the tap :thumb:

 

[Tony1951]

ok, thanks everyone ,you've been really helpful, im going for bottles now as i have those here ready , not had a chance to get a new barrel today, i have sterilised them and will try bottling, will let you know how it turns out, maybe order a new barrel for next time, i had been looking at a king keg before i decided to replace just the tap :thumb:

Hope it all comes good.