Monday, March 29, 2010

Kegging the Winter Ale and Hells Gate Porter

On 3/25 we transferred the Bah Humbug Winter Ale and the Hells Gate Porter into corny kegs. This is now our second time kegging, and things went extremely well with the transfer of the beer; it's amazing how much time you save when you don't have to clean and sanitize bottles...

Both beers had been transferred to secondaries on 3/16. The gravity measurements from 3/16 were practically identical to 3/25.

Hell's Gate Porter
OG: 1.055
FG: 1.020
Atten: 65%
ABV: 4.7%

Bah Humbug Winter Ale
OG: 1.074
FG: 1.023
Atten: 69%
ABV: 6.8%

The attenuation was a bit lower than expected based on previous brews using the same yeast; however, I believe this is mainly due to the lower temperature of the fermenting room. Don't be surprised if there is a post about a temperature-regulated fermenting box in the near future.





Problems with the kegging process:

More due diligence on both my part and one of my colleagues would have made this a much less painful process. We have a mix of cornelius keg styles with different pressure relief valves. The first group of kegs that were purchased seem to work with no issues. They have the user-initiated pressure relief levers. This latest set has a pressure relief that is triggered only when the pressure inside the keg reaches a certain level (configurable based on the strength of a tiny spring inside the pressure regulator valve in the keg top). After much fidgeting, I was able to get the pressure valve to hold 20 psi (removed the valve mechanism; cleaned it; re-tighted it).

The good news:

I'm happy with my gas setup at this point. I now have both kegs pressurized from the same CO2 tank, with the cost to extend to a 2nd keg being somewhere around $10.

No comments:

Post a Comment