Using a Cornelius Keg for home made beer
I don’t know about you but last week I was bottling my latest brew, Woodefordes Great Eastern, I was standing washing my 8th bottle and thought to myself ‘there must be a better way than washing all these bottles.’ A mate of mine uses 1l bottle (instead of the 2l that I use) how he stands and washes 23 bottles, I don’t know. I here tell of people washing 330ml bottles, that’s 80 bottles for every brew! So I do a bit of digging around on the internet and came across a Cornelius Keg, now these are converted pressure vessels that I think get used in Coke machines and the like. Everything I’ve read points to these being the ultimate solution. I found a supplier on the net and duely bought one.
The keg is basically a stainless steal cylinder that looks a bit like an aqua lung. They are converted from the standard keg in that there is an extra valve on top which is the same valve that is fitted to a normal home brew barrel, so fits the normal gas cylinders. They have a quick connect system attached to which is a pub style tap, with a pub style sparkler, so in theory you should get your beer looking like it was served by you local landlord. You can buy them from your local homebrew shop, although not cheap £65, they are suppose to be a very good way to serve your beer.
At this moment in time I don’t have any beer to put in this bit of homebrew marvellry, so I had to satisfy my desire to play with it by filling it with water and gasing that up, and pouring pints of tap water.
I’ve not used a conventional homebrew barrel before, but have thought how awkward they must be to store. The beauty of this system is that when the beer is put into the keg it is perfectly clear but flat. You then gas the keg, to 20psi this carbonates the beer, the pressure is then reduced to 6psi to store. What is does mean is there is no yeast sediment, as the beer is kegged flat and clear and no priming of the barrel is needed through fermentation, no yeast drops to the bottom of the barrel. By removing this sediment problem you can then store the barrel on it’s side; In the space I now have all my bottles, I could, in theory, store 4 kegs. Thats means a greater choice of beer for you to sup from, and less chance of running out of beer!
It is early days yet but I’ll let you know how my new keg performs in the real world, I shall be brewing up a batch of ‘York Brewery’s Yorkshire Terrier Ale’.
Update 29/06/06
Well it’s full the keg that is. I brewed the Yorkshire terrier kit, I added some beer finings about a week ago to clear down the yeast. It took a couple of days but it cleared nicely. I then very carefully syphoned the beer into the keg as per the instructions. It’ s quite amazing how much gas actually dissolves into the beer, I set it to 20PSI then gave it a good shaking when I measured it again, the pressure had dropped to around 10PSI, so I gased it up to 20 gave it another shake. I left it stand for about 5-10 mins, just to allow the gas to dissolve a bit more. After about 15 mins I reduced the pressure to 10 PSI, shook it and left it stand. Then finally I dropped the pressure down to 6 PSI for storage.
This was two days ago, I tried a glass last night, and wow what a difference a keg makes. It gave a creamy pint just like a pub. Usually when you pour from the bottle you get a good head but it is fairly loose and reduces quite quickly. Not with the keg when poured you get a much tighter finer head that lasts much longer than normal. 6PSI seems to be about right for a bitter.
The other great advantage is the beer is now ready, I don’t have to wait for it to prime then clear, and it’s always on tap, so much easier to sneak a pint (hmmm not a bad idea).