LATEST BIO- DOOMSDAY PREDICTION ( ! )

[willedoo]

What would happen if you put too much sugar in a KEG.

 

A bigger BANG ?.

 

spacesailor

 

I think a keg would handle a lot of pressure. What blows up bottles is too much secondary priming sugar placed in each bottle after filling and before capping. It's easy to lose count and put two teaspoons in a bottle instead of one. A lot of keg brewers don't use secondary fermentation, letting the CO2 bottle provide the head and bubbles.

 

Some keg brewers will add secondary sugar to the keg before filling, but a lesser proportion than what would be in bottles. Let's say a 46 lt. double brew in a 50 litre keg would be primed with 270 grams of secondary sugar. That's weighed out, diluted in hot water to make a thin syrup and put in the keg before filling. To make the same mistake as over sugaring bottles, you would have to weigh out double the sugar. You'd probably have to be very drunk to make that mistake, and the keg wouldn't come anywhere near popping it's valve anyway.

 

There's a couple of reasons why some brewers secondary ferment kegs. First of all, the beer is ready to drink as soon as it's cold and has been gassed. Secondly, in a situation where there is an air gap in the keg, e.g. two 23lt. brews = 46lt. beer in a 50 lt. keg = a 4lt. air space. Without secondary fermentation, that air space would have to be purged of O2 by running CO2 into the keg. With secondary priming, you don't have to do that as the air space turns to CO2 from the secondary fermentation. Just prime it, fill it and leave until you need to drink it.

 

50 litre ex pub kegs are the way to go if you can work out some lifting system to handle the extra weight. You can pick them up for about $50 each second hand. And they neatly hold two brews. People who are not in the know will tell horror stories about them being hard to clean, but they're not. Kegs don't get as much sediment as bottles, but you can boil a jug and chuck it in the keg to swish out the bulk of sediment, then just fill with water and sodium percarbonate (nappy san) and leave until you need to fill it with beer. When that happens, just drain it, rinse with a couple of jugs of boiled water and fill it up.

 

There's a lot of good stuff available now, like chest freezers that can dial temperature from freezer to fridge temperature. Ideal for kegs, and some people build adapter collars between the freezer and it's lid to take the tap and CO2 line so you don't have to drill holes in the freezer wall.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

I like real ales in the Old Dart. Never really got into Aussie beer, perhaps because where I lived it was West End. First time in England, first evening, we had nine pints each. It’s a wonder I still like it.

 

 

[spacesailor]

son in law's first time brew.

 

extra sugar to get more alcohol in the bottles. what a waste, dozens of bottles going Bang all through the night, used a garden rake to separate those left & if you tried to uncap one it took the neck clean off that bottle. Never tried again, so will trash the caps & whatever's left.

 

spacesailor 

 

 

[Methusala]

Dad used to brew (non-alcoholic) ginger beer when we were kids. Being an old Depression-era tragic he hated to waste anything. The recipe called for halving the sediment remaining from the ginger beer plant and discarding the half not used to start the next plant. He used to add this sediment, divided equally between the bottles, to the stored g. beer. This made a hyper-CO2 charged result. Never blew up any bottles but it took a cautious 5 minutes to ease the tops off. Dropped the occasional example which gave a spectacular explosion marked with 1m diameter of white froth on the ground. Hilarity all round. Never tasted better ginger beer.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

My parents left me in charge of the house when they went on holiday. I didn’t ever go into the dining room, which had a dozen sealed bottles of ginger beer made in that way. They had all exploded and there were strange funguses growing on the carpet and up the walls when my parents got home.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I would really like to make my own beer.. but alas the wife says that I would only drink more of the stuff if I did that.

Most home-brew tastes ok to me so I think she is right.

[willedoo]

I would really like to make my own beer.. but alas the wife says that I would only drink more of the stuff if I did that.

Most home-brew tastes ok to me so I think she is right.

 

Bruce, it's odds on she is right. Kegs are great, but the problem begins with a beer tap hanging off the side of the fridge. Bottles, although inferior regarding quality, have one advantage; you can count the empties and keep track of consumption. On the other hand, it's not uncommon to be wandering past the tap with half a beer and just keep topping it up.

[kgwilson]

I've been making my own beer since the 1980s. I started making a basic lager with little body or flavour but you got pretty pissed. I am somewhat more refined now and make a very nice IPA and Pale Ale derivatives but of course the cost of ingredients (I only use malt, no sugar) is exponentially higher than a crappy tasteless lager.

 

Craft Breweries are finally making an inroad in to Australias Beer drinking culture. It happened 30 years ago in my native land and I enjoy going back to Nelson (NZ) just for the beer. There were around 40 breweries at one time for a population of 50,000, some very small, but the quality of almost all was outstanding. A pale ale I enjoyed out of WA some years ago was Little Creatures. They got big & were bought by Lion which is a shame but the beer is still pretty good, (expensive though).

[spacesailor]

RED BAND !

K G

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Red Back was a micro/specialist brewer in Nth Melbourne in the 90s They did a good wheat/weiss beer at the time..

 

I was impressed with how the ircorbrewries cottoned on in Melb when last there for a flying visit. Though, at $12 a 375ml stubbie, it was a bit rich. I noticed that the VB tasted better than I remember, too. At $5 a pot, it was a little more affordable.

[spacesailor]

RED BAND BEER.

In Wellington NZ,

it tasted like it had Water added.

No wonder you bought it by the Flagon ( gallon ).

spacesailor

[willedoo]

RED BAND BEER.

In Wellington NZ,

it tasted like it had Water added.

No wonder you bought it by the Flagon ( gallon ).

spacesailor

 

Absolute worst beer ever was Mandalay Bitter in Burma. It was like really off, badly infected home brew. Had a strong rotten egg gas smell. Also, no consistency between bottles. Some were really bad and some were worse than bad.

[Yenn]

I like Tooheys Old or Great Northern. 4X and VB I wouldn't touch and Reschs is not really beer at all.

Of the British beers back in the UK I used to like Worthington, Bass and Guinness. my old man had a Whitbreads pub and that wasn't bad, but that is gong back over 50 years.

[willedoo]

and Reschs is not really beer at all.

 

Do you remember Resch's DA. The DA stands for dinner ale, but during the beer strike it was known as Dog's A*se.

[Yenn]

I do remember calling in to Coffs harbour in the seventies, that is the real harbour as I was delivering a yacht, not the town of Coffs. The only pub at the harbour was a Reschs and they only sold us one beer each before we got a taxi to a more civilised place.