Pressure barrel bulging!

[pete_pete]

Thinking on a bit, to take the cap off my PB I need to use a wide-mouthed wood cramp and a LOT of leverage. I doubt if my ageing muscles could manage to remove the cap if it was under any significant pressure; so how did you manage it?

Do you have a king keg?

 

[terrym]

Provided you don't abuse them by overpressurising them and also keep an eye on the seals, there's nowt wrong with the cheap standard PBs.
I operate three.
However ultimately they are prone to leaks along the seams.
So unless you have plenty of cash to spare , my view is that the only time to upgrade is if you want something a bit more special than to just keep and dispense your beer in a simple way, or your cheap PB has failed.

 

[Dutto]

Do you have a king keg?

Yes, a KK Top-Tap and a Wilco El Cheapo.

The KK has behaved itself so far, but the Wilco barrel often finishes up like an animated Kelly Doll, ...:thumb:

... which must account for some of the cloudiness in the beer! :whistle:

 

[mrboxpiff]

Can I jump in on this with an interesting twist. I have 2 barrels with beer I brewed on the same day. One filled to say an inch to 2 inches from the top, the other only 3/4 full. I primed both with the correct proportion of priming sugar. The 3/4 full barrel is bulging a lot where as the other one doesn't appear to have bulged at all. So question, can you have too little headspace for secondary fermentation, or do I have a leaky barrel?

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[terrym]

@mrboxpiff
You will know if you have a leaky barrel, especially if it sits somewhere for a long time. You will simply not have enough pressure in the barrel, to dispense most if not all of your beer. At worst you will get very little beer out even after a few days of carbonation since all of the CO2 generated has leaked.
My take on using the same quantity of sugar to prime different volumes of beer (assuming no leaks) is that since the larger liquid volume has a greater capacity to absorb more CO2 it results in a lower gas-liquid equilibrium pressure (i.e resulting pressure in the barrel). I'm sure someone out there could work that one out to confirm this if they wanted to, including me if I put my mind to it.

 

[Thumper]

So to put it simply, the lesser volume of liquid can absorp less CO2, which means more CO2 exists as gas, and gas takes up more room (more room, in this case, than the greater headspace provided by the lower volume of liquid). Have I understood that right?

It certainly appears to make sense.

 

[mrboxpiff]

I think my brain hurts[emoji848]

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[Sandimas]

Yes, a KK Top-Tap and a Wilco El Cheapo. The KK has behaved itself so far, but the Wilco barrel often finishes up like an animated Kelly Doll

Same here. The el cheapo keg has performed flawlessley in the 6 years I've had it, had no end of problems with the KK (multiple leaks / infections).