Wilkos Pressure Barrel

[Manitude]

Hi there, I noticed the other day that the pressure barrels in wilkos are on offer so I'm thinking about using it to help carbonate and dispense my beer from rather than bottling with some priming sugar. I'm a bit confused about exactly what to do though.
I gather that I'll need to buy the CO2 injector cap (which is conveniently also on offer at the moment) and the CO2 canisters but I've been reading online things about purging the oxygen from the head space and controlling how much pressure to put in. But I can't work out exactly how one purges the O2, nor do I see how to control the amount of CO2 I'm putting in so that dispensing is possible but the pressure doesn't split the barrel. I couldn't see any kind of setting on the valve the control the pressure; maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?

Any advice?

Ta.

 

[Slid]

I had a Boots pressure barrel back in the dark ages. Seemed like a good, time saving way to go.

It wasn't. They are a pain to clean out properly and more significantly, the priming sugar does not cope with much more use than a couple of pints every few days. Adding more primer is a ***, because the barrel is usually in a garage/shed and buying CO2 seems wierd, given how much gets produced in fermentation. A bit like paying to breathe.

Use lemonade bottles of you run out of glass is my advice.

 

[mickthetrick]

i use this type.
have to say i really like it. has the injector type cap and i only use one co2 bulb at most. make sure you put a little smear of vaseline on the rubber seals and thats about it really.
when i come to cleaning, i give it a rinse out with water first then use oxi clean with warm water. fill it up and let it soak for 30mins or so then give it a good rinse out again with water 3 or 4 times.
easy really :thumb:

 

[Slid]

i use this type.
have to say i really like it. has the injector type cap and i only use one co2 bulb at most. make sure you put a little smear of vaseline on the rubber seals and thats about it really.
when i come to cleaning, i give it a rinse out with water first then use oxi clean with warm water. fill it up and let it soak for 30mins or so then give it a good rinse out again with water 3 or 4 times.
easy really :thumb:

So there you have it, man, always makes me laugh when totally opposite advice gets given. :lol:
On the positive side, I guess that means that either way will be fine and if you want a barrel, just get a barrel. I did :thumb:
Don't let me put you off.

 

[Manitude]

i use this type.
have to say i really like it. has the injector type cap and i only use one co2 bulb at most. make sure you put a little smear of vaseline on the rubber seals and thats about it really.
when i come to cleaning, i give it a rinse out with water first then use oxi clean with warm water. fill it up and let it soak for 30mins or so then give it a good rinse out again with water 3 or 4 times.
easy really :thumb:

So there you have it, man, always makes me laugh when totally opposite advice gets given. :lol:
On the positive side, I guess that means that either way will be fine and if you want a barrel, just get a barrel. I did :thumb:
Don't let me put you off.

Thanks. I just checked my bottle collection and after throwing out a few that had grown infections (probably due to lazily not even rinsing them after a session!) I've just about got enough to bottle my current brew. I think I'll throw out all the brown glass ones as I can't tell if they're infected.

I'll probably leave the keg for a bit. Maybe I'll get one for my next cider brew

 

[IOMMick]

i use this type.
have to say i really like it. has the injector type cap and i only use one co2 bulb at most. make sure you put a little smear of vaseline on the rubber seals and thats about it really.
when i come to cleaning, i give it a rinse out with water first then use oxi clean with warm water. fill it up and let it soak for 30mins or so then give it a good rinse out again with water 3 or 4 times.
easy really :thumb:

So there you have it, man, always makes me laugh when totally opposite advice gets given. :lol:
On the positive side, I guess that means that either way will be fine and if you want a barrel, just get a barrel. I did :thumb:
Don't let me put you off.

Thanks. I just checked my bottle collection and after throwing out a few that had grown infections (probably due to lazily not even rinsing them after a session!) I've just about got enough to bottle my current brew. I think I'll throw out all the brown glass ones as I can't tell if they're infected.

I'll probably leave the keg for a bit. Maybe I'll get one for my next cider brew

You have infected bottles? Soak them in water with bleach for a few days, it kills all bacteria (and everything else, including MRSA) so I'm sure it will get rid of any problems you have. Just rinse the bottles thoroughly after the soak.

In terms of a pressure barrel - the jury is out on whether or not I will continue to use them. I barreled a bitter a few weeks back and I'm getting inconsistent leaky drips from the tap, and some pints come out fully carbonated while a few pints later its quite flat and the head dies until I squirt in more CO2 and let it settle for a while (it's not CO2 leaks as it doesn't lose carbonation over time, only when pints are poured).

 

[Manitude]

You have infected bottles? Soak them in water with bleach for a few days, it kills all bacteria (and everything else, including MRSA) so I'm sure it will get rid of any problems you have. Just rinse the bottles thoroughly after the soak.

In terms of a pressure barrel - the jury is out on whether or not I will continue to use them. I barreled a bitter a few weeks back and I'm getting inconsistent leaky drips from the tap, and some pints come out fully carbonated while a few pints later its quite flat and the head dies until I squirt in more CO2 and let it settle for a while (it's not CO2 leaks as it doesn't lose carbonation over time, only when pints are poured).

Yes, this one is the worst:

There were only three infected and they were all Savannah Dry bottles, which is kind of odd. But as there were only three out of thirty that are infected it's probably not worth the effort to clean them out.

Going to sterilise the rest in the next day or two. Even if I can't see anything on them right now they've been sitting in a box for a couple of months without caps on so better safe than sorry!

 

[IOMMick]

You have infected bottles? Soak them in water with bleach for a few days, it kills all bacteria (and everything else, including MRSA) so I'm sure it will get rid of any problems you have. Just rinse the bottles thoroughly after the soak.

In terms of a pressure barrel - the jury is out on whether or not I will continue to use them. I barreled a bitter a few weeks back and I'm getting inconsistent leaky drips from the tap, and some pints come out fully carbonated while a few pints later its quite flat and the head dies until I squirt in more CO2 and let it settle for a while (it's not CO2 leaks as it doesn't lose carbonation over time, only when pints are poured).

Yes, this one is the worst:

There were only three infected and they were all Savannah Dry bottles, which is kind of odd. But as there were only three out of thirty that are infected it's probably not worth the effort to clean them out.

Going to sterilise the rest in the next day or two. Even if I can't see anything on them right now they've been sitting in a box for a couple of months without caps on so better safe than sorry!

Yeah don't throw them out - I lived in the Mediterranean for a few years and I used to have walls like that come the end of the winter (no central heating) - a quick single wipe with some simple water and bleach solution had the walls cleared of fungus within a few days.

If you can't tell already I really like bleach - I keep shouting at the missus when she comes home with 'Super Toilet Cleaner Extreme 4000' which does a much worse job than a 20p bottle of LIDL chlorine

 

[Dads_Ale]

One other way is to get one of the 12l barrels (probably not on offer in Wilkos though) then you can put half of the brew in one of these and bottle the rest (assuming a 23-24 litre brew). That way if the barrel doesn't work you have not lost the entire lot.
I tried one of these recently and apart from the tap joint leaking as pressure built up I found the beer stayed in condition for the 4 days it took to finish it off and that's with releasing the cap to get the beer out rather than injecting with Co2.

 

[Pearlfisher]

i use this type.
have to say i really like it. has the injector type cap and i only use one co2 bulb at most. make sure you put a little smear of vaseline on the rubber seals and thats about it really.
when i come to cleaning, i give it a rinse out with water first then use oxi clean with warm water. fill it up and let it soak for 30mins or so then give it a good rinse out again with water 3 or 4 times.
easy really :thumb:

+1 :thumb:

 

[Manitude]

You have infected bottles? Soak them in water with bleach for a few days, it kills all bacteria (and everything else, including MRSA) so I'm sure it will get rid of any problems you have. Just rinse the bottles thoroughly after the soak.

In terms of a pressure barrel - the jury is out on whether or not I will continue to use them. I barreled a bitter a few weeks back and I'm getting inconsistent leaky drips from the tap, and some pints come out fully carbonated while a few pints later its quite flat and the head dies until I squirt in more CO2 and let it settle for a while (it's not CO2 leaks as it doesn't lose carbonation over time, only when pints are poured).

Yes, this one is the worst:

There were only three infected and they were all Savannah Dry bottles, which is kind of odd. But as there were only three out of thirty that are infected it's probably not worth the effort to clean them out.

Going to sterilise the rest in the next day or two. Even if I can't see anything on them right now they've been sitting in a box for a couple of months without caps on so better safe than sorry!

Yeah don't throw them out - I lived in the Mediterranean for a few years and I used to have walls like that come the end of the winter (no central heating) - a quick single wipe with some simple water and bleach solution had the walls cleared of fungus within a few days.

If you can't tell already I really like bleach - I keep shouting at the missus when she comes home with 'Super Toilet Cleaner Extreme 4000' which does a much worse job than a 20p bottle of LIDL chlorine

What kind of bleach dilution is appropriate? I've not used bleach for anything other than cleaning toilets before!

 

[IOMMick]

What kind of bleach dilution is appropriate? I've not used bleach for anything other than cleaning toilets before!

There's probably a more precise science for this, but a couple of squirts in a 25l tub should be sufficient (assuming you're using an FV). The single worry I have about using bleach is being able to rinse it well enough so it doesn't taint the taste of your beer later, so I tend to dilute it quite a bit and it still appears to do the job. If you read the back of package it will probably say 1 part bleach for 4 parts water to kill mold, but I think that's overkill.