how was the party?
Un...freaking...believable...
The Friday night pre-party was at my house for just relatives. There were probably 35-40 Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. We killed one keg of the Cream ALe, half a keg of the wit and surprisingly, nearly half a keg of the Irish Red. It was a nice prelude to the real party on Saturday.
Saturday AM I went over to the house to set up the rig. I gotta be honest...the last thing you want to think about after a 2AM beer binge the night before is waking up early to lug four full kegs around in 98 degree heat.
Once I dropped the three cornies into place, the rig only held two large bags of ice. I put the other two bags into the freezer and asked my BIL, (staying at their house) to refill the rig with fresh ice as necessary.
Turns out the insulation was enough that even after 8 hours sitting in the heat...he didn't need to add any ice.
When I got to the party at 5:00 and hooked up the CO2 unit, I was a bit nervous about everything working according to plan. I went first with the 9-Oz CO2 bottle thinking that if it ran out...I'd then go with the 1-pounder.
I hooked up the beer lines...fastened the gas lines to the CO2 unit and hooked up the ball locks. Dialed up the CO2 just until the needle lifted off the peg...and drew a pint of the cream ale. The first pint was pure foam.
Immediately I started regretting not having my other BIL pick up some cases of BMC as a back up.
I decided to draw a pint of the Irish Ale...and it was perfect. I moved to the Wit and it too was perfect. Holding out hope, I returned to the Cream Ale (which I knew would be the popular beer of the evening) and tried again. The first half of the pint...foam...but then...the beer started flowing smoothly. It looked like the more highly carbonated CA was just a bit touchier.
About this time, people started taking notice and lining up.
I spent the first 1 1/2 hours standing next to the taps talking about nothing but homebrewing. Even the blue haired ladies who were sipping white zin dropped their glass for a moment to sample some homebrew.
By the end of the evening, we went through a full keg of Cream Ale, plus half of a second that I brought (just in case) and killed the full keg of Irish Ale. The Wit had about 1/4 left this morning when I went to break things down.
All in all, the system performed flawlessly. No problems with the CO2. The beer stayed cold throughout and there was even ice in the rig this morning.
We all met back up at the house today (Sunday) for a brunch before people left town and all anyone could talk about was the homebrewed beer and the "cute little" delivery system out of the garbage can.
I couldn't have been more happy with the affair. Now..I'm of to clean some kegs and dismantle "trash-r-ator" until next time.