Consensus on what next after bottles??

With a 5L Fass-Frisch keg, you take a tiny little keg my silver-haired mother-in-law wouldn't strain to carry great distances.

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Well, that just adds a whole new level, doesn't it?

Methinks I should investigate these wee kegs.

Are you pushing with C02 or dispensing with gravity?

Grinder12000 said:

However - I do look at the future as I have a local person watching my progress as an investor and he has mentioned SEVERAL times about starting a brewery / brew pub and backing me financially.

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Why not mention this investor guy that you'll need some better equipment to get better at brewing, and then see if he'll cough up a couple bucks to get you into kegging propper?

Perhaps mention it to him SEVERAL times

At the very least you'd be able to find out if he's serious.

I use kegs, bottles, 2L bottles and the carbonator. I always force carb because I am lazy, impatient and want the beer to be as clear as possible. Something that I have not seen mentioned (I didnt read every post) is that if you keg you can transfer to bottles or 2L bottles or any bottle that can handle it with a beer gun or the cheap racking cane/stopper method. Now I have not let a beer sit in the bottle using the racking cane method for more than a month but at 1 month it tasted fine, no reason to think a couple more months would change that.

I also made a homemade keg dispenser using a 2L bottle, bike co2 pump and some fittings. This system looks awesome but really the carbonator is a better setup. How often do you go somewhere and not drink the 2L of beer that you brought.

My experience went like this. Bottled the first batch. Monitored Craigslist for a fridge and Co2 bottle with regulator and before the second batch was ready to bottle, I had a kegerator. I almost don't know any other way.

Yunus said:

... Now I have not let a beer sit in the bottle using the racking cane method for more than a month but at 1 month it tasted fine, no reason to think a couple more months would change that.

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BierMuncher has confirmed bottles being perfectly carb'ed still after over 1 year from date of BMBF'ing. Likewise I have some sitting at about 6 months that are still carb'ed great.

flyangler18 said:

Methinks I should investigate these wee kegs.

Are you pushing with C02 or dispensing with gravity?

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Both. Fass-Frisch 5L kegs have a built-in tap. What with the two-piece bung, dispensing Real Ale is a snap!

I have other kegs sans tap. For those I have a CO2 tap which uses those little cartridges. Whippets, I believe they used to be called by the paint-huffing crowd.

You must realize, of course, that you cannot artificially carbonate beer in 5L minikegs. It must either be carbonated before filling or naturally conditioned in the keg. I prefer the latter, of course, given my slathering obsession with session-strength Real Ale, but the BMBF can presumably be used to fill them.

Another caveat is that they are not stainless. They're coated with some sort of sealant on the inside that will eventually degrade. So they're not items of infinite use, like Cornelius kegs.

But handy? Hell, yeah!

Bob

I thought Whippets were nitrous oxide, not carbon dioxide. Am I imagining this?

Sorry. . Continue.

Started a new thread on the Fass-Frisch here.

Chriso said:

I thought Whippets were nitrous oxide, not carbon dioxide. Am I imagining this?

Sorry. . Continue.

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Yeah, that's the colloquial term for the NO2 carts.

CO2 comes packaged in much the same way, in steel pierce-pin cartridges. They have 8, 12 and 18 gram (by weight, of course) carts and some other sizes that are less common. Because they vary by size, you need the correct-sized adapter for the cart size you want to use.

Also, 12g carts are very common for use in air guns and air-powered portable tools. To manufacture them, they are pressed out of sheet steel by a set of dies into long tubes and then crimped into cylinders. A significant ammount of lubrication is required in the pressing process and some of this stays inside the cart when it is filled. It's just air tool oil so it's actually beneficial to the tools and guns they're used in but it tastes nasty and will destroy your head if used to carb or press beer with. You need to get food-grade carts which are scrubbed after forming, contain no oil and are about 3x as expensive. You can't just go to WalMart and pick up a 20-pack of 12g carts.

I've used 12g carts in a pinch trying to dispense at the after-paintball party. It works, but the results are less than stellar. In the middle of the woods, few people mind but it's not something I'd do on a regular basis.



Honestly, aside from the added cleaning workload, bottles aren't that much more work than kegs. I used bottles exclusively before jumping up to kegs (though I did use a few growlers -and one champagne bottle- here and there when I had them). I'd recommend bypassing the middle stuff altogether.

Both bottles and kegs have their advantages and disadvantages. I still use both depending upon what I need to do with them.