homebrewandbeer.com

Excellent site............


But what i wanted to know is what would i need to put my brew in a keg and what would it cost to start kegging from scratch ? And how many kegs would a man need ???


Kind regards

Roof

I am also interested in this. I was only talking to a mate today about it. Any info would be greatly appreciated as it is my long term goal to put some beer in kegs and have it on tap.

One thing I don't understand is how is it gassed or carbonatated.


Ashy

Hi Guys

Well, I'd love to get a keg setup as well... but at the moment finances are a bit tight (I'm a uni student)

I cant give you all the kegging details, but I might be able to shed light on the gassing.

Once you do your primary fermentation you put your brew in one of those corny keg things and connect it up to your gas (CO2) and put it under pressure.

Anyway, henry's law (google it) states that the solubility of a gas into a liquid depends on temperature and the partial pressure of the gas.

Basiclly as the brew is under pressure it "adsorbs" the co2 ....

Maybe I'm way off track, can someone correct me if I am, to many chemistry memories flooding back

Cheers

Wazza

Guys,

I put a system together and it is truely the best thing I did. I use the 19 L pepsi cylinders and charge them off a 20 lb CO2 system. I keep the kegs in a converted fridge and use a counter pressure tap to get the beer out. If you like, I can give you all the good details and pics as well as some really helpful hints. Cost wise it was about 200 bucks Canadian but I got the fridge for free.

Dogger Dan

wazza wrote:Anyway, henry's law (google it) states that the solubility of a gas into a liquid depends on temperature and the partial pressure of the gas.

Specifically, the colder the liquid the more soluble the gas, so it's better to carbonate your beer while it's in the fridge. Let it sit at the desired pressure for 48 hours and it should be well carbonated. It can be shaken to speed up the process, but that can get rather labour intensive.

Alternatively you can "keg condition" your beer - just prime it as you would normally (maybe 200g of sugar for an 18lt keg) and let it sit for a couple of weeks at your normal secondary fermentation temperature. For this to work well though, it's best to cut off the bottom half inch or so of the feeder pipe so that the yeast sediment doesn't get in your beer.

Anyone know where to get cheap keg equipment in Australia? The best I can find comes in at $AUD300 plus postage from Townsville, and that doesn't include the CO2 bottle (needs to be hired from Air Liquide or BOC). Ebay is no better, a full set of keg equipment frequently comes in over $300.

"Glorious, Glorious, one keg of beer for the four of us......"

Ok it is high time I get this on the road. So you want to keg. Fine, ask yourself why?

1. It is easy to do, don't have the pain of cleaning bottles right.
2. Don't need to prime so I don't get the "heel"
3. You can turn around a batch inside a week (no crap)
3. It is great being able to tell your wingers that you have a tap (and it is)

Truthfully, kegging is one of the final frontiers, short of brewing all grains, it may be the biggest, self gratifying event you can do as a Brewer as far as I am concerned.

So ask yourself what does it take to keg your beer? Good question, it does take some time and thought. I built my own system and at one point was set to trash it because it was blowing off all the carbonation at the tap and I was sitting on flat beer in my glass. I would save you from this if you are willing to try.

So in order to keg my beer I had to figure out how to make it happen, truthfully it isn't hard. You need to think about a couple of things.

1: What am I going to put the beer in that can hold a pressure?
2: How am I going to deliver the pressure?
3: How do I get the goods in the glass?

So question 1, I went with those pressurizable pepsi cylinders that hold 19 litres. Right enough, stainless for ease of cleaning, hold a pressure, can apply a pressure, can get beer out, awesome. On top of it, I know a bloke who is throwing them out so cheap, cheap, cheap.

2 and 3: pepsi fittings around the keg right, IN and OUT? Sure and why not, It has worked for Pepsi since te 60's, just need a source of CO2 and a tap now. These were the hardest things to find, the crap tap I got (and this is where the magic comes in) would blow off all my carbonation so you were drinking flat beer. This was called a Cobra Tap, I can tell you what Cobra can do, and if by chance I ever bump into a Cobra rep they owe me about 5 gallons and a refund on my dollars. If you guys know anyone who is a rep, sauce him/her for some beers and dinner and we will call it square, my gift to you.

But first the CO2 cylinder, whatever you do DON"T BUY THIS FROM YOUR BREW PLACE. They are marking it up, huge, talk to your local Fire Department. They use 20 lb CO2 cylinders to put out fires and on top of it , they sell refurbished tanks cheap. They also can fill it with CO2 for you (Cheap if you are willing to part with a few wets, cheap like, for free)

3. Tap. Guys, spend the cake, I got mine at a sweet price, the guy couldn't sell the thing, so I gave him an offer and it was good, especially seeing I was buying beer kits from him and malt and hops. Try some restaurants that went tits up, sometimes you can stal a deal there to

TAPS AGAIN:

The cobra tap, which is the cheapest, sucks (anything that causes me to piss away 5 gallons of good brew desirves my wrath) It requires you to do some math to calculate line loss on pressure based on delivery (like we haven't done enough calcs eh getting to where we are). You may want to step your line diameter down in order to use this tap, I had mixed results with this. There is also the idea that pressures (carbonation) vary by beers (and they do) I don't have the numbers on hand but it seems British Beers have a low level of carbonation while North American have the highest which means you get to figure it out as to how to deliver beer at 1 oz per second at your tap for every beer you brew, which means you have to do the math on every beer you brew. THIS TRULY SUCKED AND IF ANYONE WANTS A CRAP COBRA TAP I WILL SEND IT TO YOU.

Mine is currently being used to tilt my Carboys on angle to get every drop which is the only usefull purpose that it has had, short of beating the dog with it for eating my shoe.

Spend the bucks on the good counter pressurized tap (a Cobra is about 5-10 bucks, a counter pressurized about 80-100). The counter pressure tap allows you to dial on a certain pressure so your delivery of beer at the tap outlet is 1 oz per second regardless of tank pressure. Don't ask me how this is, just trust me that the magic works. It also means you don't need to worry about line losses from turbulent flow etc etc. This is the way to go folks, not a doubt.

Cold beer, again I live in Canada and we have these things called basements, which during one of my last posts, I was informed that most of the world doesn't (Sorry to hear about that 'cause they are the best, you can have your own brewery down there as I do). Additionally there is extra room for that beer fridge, which by drilling a couple of holes in that spare fridge, can suddenly can support the CO2 line in, and the tap out, all the time while the 19 litres of nectar is cold, so you get cold beer at the tap with low CO2 costs.

As someone mentioned, the warmer your beer, the less CO2 it can hold so you have to jack up the pressure in order to achieve the right level of carbonation (remember, the higher the pressure, the faster your beer comes out and the more turbulence you create using that Kife Cobra I know everyone is going to get.) There is an option of running your beer through ice in a Coleman Cooler along with about about a mile of hose. As I have never tried this, I can't really speak to it but based on what I have seen in my world this just ain't going to work real well.

OK folks, some food for thought, perhaps more to follow if anyone cares

Everyone have a good weekend

Dogger

Isaac wrote:Anyone know where to get cheap keg equipment in Australia? The best I can find comes in at $AUD300 plus postage from Townsville, and that doesn't include the CO2 bottle (needs to be hired from Air Liquide or BOC). Ebay is no better, a full set of keg equipment frequently comes in over $300.

Isaac would you be able to post or send me the details of that Townsville adress, The cheapest i can find is about 370 around Brizzie. And 70 dollars mean an extra keg.

Cheers mate.

Roof

$300, two keg starters system:

http://www.hbrews.com.au/product_info.p ... 1f87ca9575

That said, I think it comes with the dreaded "Cobra" tap, as above. Either that or it's just a really cheap plastic tap, which may not be any good anyway. Adding a proper gun brings it to $395.

I found this product locally but it is an americian product not really the same as a full system but maybe an alternative. The unit is called tap-a-draft and can be seen at http://www.ibrew.com.au. I won't try and explain the unit here the site can do that I was impressed with what I saw and I am considering it for myself in the future.Does anyone out there have any hands on experience with this product.I think the retail price was $170 aus for that you got the tap assembly and 4 bottles and 10 co2 cartridges.
I will also just say that I have no link with this product just thought it looked good
cheers poss

Hi poss

I did a bit of research into tap a draft about 6 months ago and was close to getting a setup .... I think now though I'll just wait untill I can afford a proper keg setup.

Anyway, my only comment would be how much of a rippoff it is over here, I found it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to get sent out from the US than to buy from the importer in QLD ... even if you just ordered the regulator .... check out this link for a start.

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products ... 20&sub=230

Would be even cheaper if you could get a few people toogether to share postage costs!

cheeers

Wazza

Hi guys first time poster.

I brought a keg kit from a home brew joint in High St Penrith, NSW. I got 2 keg's, reg, lines, tap and beer fermenter, etc for around $320. I just had to hire the CO2 which costs around $100 bucks a year.

I had a friend who had been kegging home brew for a few years and did nothing but brag about it.

So one Satuday afternoon I wandered into the home brew shop and with the permission of the Mrs, the visa card came out and out we walked with the package.

I used to home brew years before hand and always had the shits with cleaning bottles, capping etc.

First beer I put down was beamish red.

After kegging it, I left the brew sit for around 4 weeks, we could have left it longer but had a fair bit of pressure from the mates, who wanted to hook in.

I picked up an old fridge, drilled a hole in the side where the gas line enters and another hole in the door for the tap.

I placed the keg in the fridge on the friday morning, left it for around 24 hours, connected up the gas and left it for another 24 hr at 37 Psi, When the boys came over on the Sunday afternoon I turned the gas down to around 13 - 15 PSI and we were ready to go.

Was it a hit?

We also had a 30 pack of VB tins in the fridge, the boys loved the keg and it was finished before we touched the VB's.

I am currently building a house, so when we finish that and build the bar I will have a smaller fridge under the bar and a real working tap up top and be the envy of all my mates. I also intend to buy at least another 3 kegs and rotate them and give the beer a little more time to age.

Worth the money? Bloody oath.

You guys ought to get yourselves over to the AussieHomeBrewer forum and read up on keg systems.

Grumpys in Adelaide and ESB in Sydney have keg systems and the knowledge on how to set this sort of stuff up. $300 - $400 will get you a good 2 keg system with taps for the fridge door.

Cheers,
Trough Lolly (Lurking but a member of several brewing forums!)

I must say, once you try kegging, you won't go back. Since I have no sense of the value of money, I went crazy with my set up. I bought a 160litre chest freezer and fitted a thermostat to it (good for -18c to 30c). I can fit 4 x 18litre kegs in it - 2 Pepsi, 2 Coke style. I also bought a 2 tap t-bar font that is glycol cooled (essential if you don't want your beer foaming up when it hits the warm tap). All up about $1200, but it's not about the money is it ? It's about your mates saying "you've made it Evo".

You could perhaps save money on buying your kegs by "borrowing" an empty commercial one from somewhere. You can actually fill these with homebrew quite easily, you just need the beer/gas fitting for that variety of keg (usually available on ebay).

Just curious, what would the shelf life of a kegged brew be? Once you tap the keg, how long till it starts to go "off"?

I might have the chance to get my hands on a few 50L DIN's and fittings as used by pubs in WA. With a 60 L fermenter I can put together a nice brew to fill it with, but don't want it to die before I finish drinking it!! Now I know some will say that you shouldn't let it go to waste, so drink it quickly, but I do have the liver to consider (oh and the missus!!!) I also want to be able to "brag" about my setup with the boys for a while and not have to wait to rebrew too often.

And while I'm at it another stupd question : Once the brew is in the keg, can you then use it to fill bottles, without priming to take out with you?

Rain, I do like you chest freezer idea, did you fit the thermostat yourself?

Simon

Sorry to the Missus but

Beer actually lasts longer in the keg

and yes, you can bottle it through the keg at pressure using a counter pressure filler (may have to build it)

Dogger

Well the beer doesn't last long in my kegs - but that's more due to the fact of people drinking it (mainly me).

Nah, seriously, as long as it was nice and sterile to start with, you keep it cold and you have CO2 on it, it'll last ages. I had a keg of stout in my fridge for the best part of a year and it just got better. It would depend on the type of beer you're brewing too I suppose, but you've at least got a good few months to drink it.

Yeah, the chest freezer works a treat. It's a good square space without any wasted room. A mate of mine has a 160Litre bar fridge and can only fit two kegs in that. Oh, and the thermostat is a piece of... well a piece of pie to fit. Cost about $60 from an electrical suppliers or $100 from a brew shop.

Lastly, DD, what is a "counter pressure filler" ? I've filled some Grolsh bottles just with the gun and they were hunky dory.

The filler is similar to what they use in U-Brew shops where you cahrge the botle with CO2 to balance the pressure in the keg and then fill with out generating a head

Dogger

cheers guys,

looks like my next project is to try to get a keg setup going, i wonder if the missus will let me keep it in the lounge room? (less distance to walk then to get a refill!!!)

I have just set up a keg system using C.U.B. kegs that were given to me by my freindly publican (not strictly legal). i bought the coupling, pluto, beer tap,lines, fridge and regulator at garage sales and second hand places. I intend making a temp right out of some stainless steel coil and an old esky so that I can take the keg system on camping trips etc...
I am yet to use it, the first brew is fermenting as we speak. total cost without the bigger fermenter and gas bottle which I will rent was about $180.
Scrounge and ye shall find!

Well I think I might have convinced the old man to invest in a keg system. Now I need to know whats the best system to get for his money (in perth)

Westbrew has a setup for $399.00
Keg Systems with Beer Gun. (System contains 2 kegs)

Is this a good setup? Can I get better for less around perth? Where do I get the gas bottle and how much are they usualy (refills etc)? And how much room do I need, will they fit in an avg bar fridge?