Gilbey

Recipes 

Can someone explain cask conditioning? And can you do it in a keg? How?

Thanks!

Gilbey

ScottT

Recipes 

If your keg is a Jerkin or Pin, then yes.

Cask Conditioning is much like bottle conditioning in that a secondary fermentation takes place under pressure in the final containment vessel of the ale.

Where they differ, is what takes place after the seal is breached. Cask conditioning allows the beer to breathe a little through the use of a pourous stile.

The best site I've fond for describing the process is Camra's publication on Cellarmanship.

http://realale.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/articles/cellarmanship.html

__________________
Scott

Primary: Empty

Secondary #2: Empty

Bottle Conditioning: Oatmeal Stout

Drinking from Keg: Ordinary Bitter, Kolsch

Drinking bottled: Brown Autumn Wee Heavy
Hefe Weizen
Peaches and Cream Weizen


"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"
-Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck.
Next up: Hefe Weizen

ScottT

Recipes 

Here's another good link:

http://www.whitehorsesw6.com/misc/fullstory.php?article_id=24&cat_id=2

__________________
Scott

Primary: Empty

Secondary #2: Empty

Bottle Conditioning: Oatmeal Stout

Drinking from Keg: Ordinary Bitter, Kolsch

Drinking bottled: Brown Autumn Wee Heavy
Hefe Weizen
Peaches and Cream Weizen


"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"
-Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck.
Next up: Hefe Weizen

Uncle Fat

Recipes 

MoreBeer (among others) sells a settable pressure relief valve for a corny, so you can let your beer carbonate to whatever pressure you want in the secondary. Then, to dispense, you attach your tap line to the 'gas-in' connection of the corny (instead of the 'out' connection). Now put your corny upside down to allow the weight of the beer feed the tap instead of pressure.

That's how you cask in a corny.

__________________
Our beverage that art in kegs,
Hallowed be thy tap,
With thee supplied, we will imbibe,
At home as we do in the public house.
Give us this day our liquid bread
And forgive us our spills
As we forgive those who spill upon us.
Lead us not unto hangovers
But deliver us from overindulgence.
Ahh Malt.

Buy a man a beer and he wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew and he wastes a lifetime.
-annonymous

bikebryan

Recipes 

You'll never get carbonation in a corny unless you use a CO2 tank. Why? Because the lid won't seal unless you pressurize the keg. If you rack to the corny, prime, then seal the lid, all your precious CO2 will just leak right out. You need to pressurize the keg with a blast of CO2 to seal it.

Since you are using CO2 anyway, why not just use it to carbonate as well? That way you avoid the sediment from priming, which is one reason to keg in the first place.

wild

Recipes 

I disagree bikebryan. I've conditioned several beers in cornys and never once had to use a burst of CO2 to seal it. Thank goodness for keg lube.
Real Ale or conditioned beer is considered live beer which makes the sediment part of the real ale experience.

Wild

__________________
On Tap -

1. 3 year old Oak Aged Bourbon Porter
2. Irish Red Rye
3. Robust Porter
4. Russian Imperial Stout
5. Mirror Pond Clone dry hopped with Citra
6. Mirror Pond Clone dry hopped with Centennial

Primary - Nada
Secondary -

From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world. -- Saint Arnoldus

Uncle Fat

Recipes 

My last four of five batches would disagree with you.. I usually have a keg on tap, so I just do my secondary in a corny with a pressure valve, and by the time I'm done with what's on tap, the next batch is naturally carbonated and ready to drink.

__________________
Our beverage that art in kegs,
Hallowed be thy tap,
With thee supplied, we will imbibe,
At home as we do in the public house.
Give us this day our liquid bread
And forgive us our spills
As we forgive those who spill upon us.
Lead us not unto hangovers
But deliver us from overindulgence.
Ahh Malt.

Buy a man a beer and he wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew and he wastes a lifetime.
-annonymous

kneemoe

Recipes 

same here, actually no sugar priming, been using unfermented wort from the fridge (save a ball jar from every batch to do it), and get plenty of carbonation


- one question tho,
put the corny upside down and do a gravity feed to use it as a cask, ok straight-foward enough, but how does the corny get more air in it to allow the beer to flow if its upside down? you guys fitting them with a different blow-off valve or just turning it right side up when it starts movin slow?

Uncle Fat

Recipes 

The upside down thing I haven't done myself (only read about). It's supposed to be a more authentic cask expericnce... If I were doing it (might try this soon), I'd put an open-ended ball-lock connector (or maybe one connected to a filter) on the "out" connection (attached to the down-tube) to let air in. Pretty much just the oposite of normal keg operation.

__________________
Our beverage that art in kegs,
Hallowed be thy tap,
With thee supplied, we will imbibe,
At home as we do in the public house.
Give us this day our liquid bread
And forgive us our spills
As we forgive those who spill upon us.
Lead us not unto hangovers
But deliver us from overindulgence.
Ahh Malt.

Buy a man a beer and he wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew and he wastes a lifetime.
-annonymous

kneemoe

Recipes 

duh - how completely obvious can an question/answer be, and still leave me scartchin my head, lol
im gonna haveta try that with the next bitter i brew, and invite all the friends i can over to kick it in a night
i've tasted enough 'bad' cask beers to know to avoid *that* (they're only bad cuz they weren't sucked down quick enough)