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Marty Michael
Junior Member
Username: Carwash
Post Number: 55
Registered: 11-2005
Posted From: 15.235.153.105
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 04:13 pm: | 
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HI guys,
Just wondering. Can you dispense stout through a stout faucet using CO2 (at a higher pressure) if you just turned the pressure up for dispensing and left it at a very low pressure while in storage. Just wondering if this would give more of that creamy head and be more like "real beer" without the need to find beer-gas, new regulator, etc. Has anyone tried this? |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 2573
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 216.215.203.195
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 04:26 pm: |
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It is my belief that you could use a stout faucet with CO2 if you were sure that you could maintain the presence of mind to turn the pressure down and bleed the head space for storage. In theory, this should not be an issue. In practice, it could easily become an issue. If you should forget to turn it down, it would overcarbonate and you would be plenty sorry for it. It is harder to get CO2 out of solution than you might imagine.
Dan
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Miker
Intermediate Member
Username: Miker
Post Number: 434
Registered: 02-2003
Posted From: 69.15.183.207
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 04:41 pm: |
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This will work (even though it sounds like kind of a pita as Dan suggests) and will probably give you a creamier head, but, for example CAMRA, would not consider this any closer to "real ale" because you are still using CO2 to push the beer. Many real ale people don't even like the use of the stout faucets. |
Matt Bobiak
New Member
Username: Aeneas
Post Number: 9
Registered: 11-2005
Posted From: 129.49.254.62
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 05:09 pm: |
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Of the stouts I've made, I have found that if I carbonate naturally in a keg I get the creamy head and "fall" of a stout even when dispensing from a normal faucet. We've pushed stouts thru stout faucets at my house without problems using both CO2 and beer gas. I find the only purpose that beer gas serves in the process is to limit the carbonation of the beer from the keg. I don't think it adds any creaminess or richness to the beer. If you want that thick dense head with a nice creamy texture, I recommend adding a couple ounces of flaked barley to your recipe. |
Beerboy AKA The Jolly Brewer
Senior Member
Username: Matfink
Post Number: 1019
Registered: 03-2003
Posted From: 217.44.52.121
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 05:33 pm: |
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I think the stout faucet (sparkler over here) will knock out a lot of the 'condition' from the beer as it blasts it throught those tiny holes. Obviously to keep the carbonation low you'll have to keep turning down the pressure after each use, but if you forget I can't see it being a real problem.
Marty, 'real beer' in the 'Real Ale' sense of the word, as in CAMRA, is beer that is served with no extraneous gas, either Co2 or Nitrogen mix. So your bottle conditioned beer is classed as real beer. But kegged beer is not, although it may be naturally carbonated , it is served with co2 so cannot qualify as real ale.
However, it's not really practical for homebrewers to serve real ale at home unless they have a very high turnover. So one way of mimicking is just to keep carbonation very, very low and serve under very low temperature. Also serve at cellar temps (about 10-12¼C). Sparklers are ok for irish stouts i suppose, but under no circumstances serve any other beer with one, it pushes all the hoppy aromatics into the head, which may smell nice to start, but you'll lose a lot of flavour.
Just my two pence worth of militant CAMRA bollocks. |
Miker
Intermediate Member
Username: Miker
Post Number: 436
Registered: 02-2003
Posted From: 69.15.183.207
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 08:23 pm: |
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"I find the only purpose that beer gas serves in the process is to limit the carbonation of the beer from the keg. I don't think it adds any creaminess or richness to the beer"
I would have to respectfully disagree with this part. Not saying it makes beer better or worse, but I feel beergas does add a certain creaminess and perhaps richness to beer. |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 2578
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 216.215.203.195
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 08:40 pm: |
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Beerboy, for a while I had a cube refrigerator set up with a beer engine tapped into a minikeg. It held up fairly well for normal drinking. I did, however, give it a goose with CO2 when I finished for the night if I remembered. Five liters over 3 - 5 days is a reasonable rate.
Dan
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Paul Edwards
Advanced Member
Username: Pedwards
Post Number: 978
Registered: 03-2003
Posted From: 70.236.1.219
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 09:06 pm: |
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Beerboy, I use a cask breather on my ales that I serve via beer engine.
I know it's not totally in line with the CAMRA dogma, but it work well, and I can keep a beer on tap for a long time w/o having to worry about it going off.
Oh, and I don't use the sparkler |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 2579
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 216.215.203.195
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 10:39 pm: |
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Paul, do you find that they tend to get really flat after a while? I would think that holding something at atmospheric pressure and cellar temperature would drive a lot of CO2 out.
Dan
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Beerboy AKA The Jolly Brewer
Senior Member
Username: Matfink
Post Number: 1024
Registered: 03-2003
Posted From: 217.44.52.121
| | Posted on Friday, March 10, 2006 - 09:47 am: |
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Dan, sounds ideal to me!
Paul, I don't have a problem with cask breathers. As far as I'm concerned it allows publicans with slow turnover of real ales to continue to serve them, and that IMO is a good thing. And well done for not using a sparkler, nothing worse than style over content! |
Paul Edwards
Advanced Member
Username: Pedwards
Post Number: 979
Registered: 03-2003
Posted From: 70.236.24.125
| | Posted on Friday, March 10, 2006 - 02:28 pm: |
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Dan,
Nope. 1 atm is where it should be for a cask ale.
I don't find that 1 atm is "flat" after the beer is pulled thru the engine.
If it was over 1 atm, the beer would push itself thru the engine. I had that happen once when I forgot to shut the line to the engine off, and I disconnected the breather from the gas-in when we went on vacation. I came home to find the better part of 3 gallons of ESB had pushed itself thru the engine onto the basement floor  |
Dan Listermann
Senior Member
Username: Listermann
Post Number: 2580
Registered: 03-2004
Posted From: 216.215.203.195
| | Posted on Friday, March 10, 2006 - 02:58 pm: |
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Paul, my concern was about how long the beer retains much carbonation at atmospheric pressure. A freshly tapped keg will have more carbonation than a keg that has been sitting at atmospheric pressure for a couple of weeks. When I had the cube refrigerator, I would plug the spout when I was finished so that the gas coming out of solution would not push the beer out through the engine. Before I unpluged it, I had to vent the keg.
Dan
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Paul Edwards
Advanced Member
Username: Pedwards
Post Number: 981
Registered: 03-2003
Posted From: 70.236.24.125
| | Posted on Friday, March 10, 2006 - 04:03 pm: |
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With a breather, you don't need to vent, and the beer stays at perfect cask ale condition for a long time, several weeks. |
Brews and Views Archive 2006 
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