Tap-A-Draft

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Lochboy

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Has anyone here used a tap-a-draft system?? I have used one for 3 brews. first 2 were great and am now thinking about using Nitrogen for a Stout.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

Lochboy
 
Lochboy said:
The Tap-a-draft uses CO2 to carbonate or serve the beer. You can also use Nitrogen to serve the beer giving it the nice creamy head and mouth feel you get in Scottish, Irish and English ales that I know from back home.

If I am correct on this... To get that creamy head, you need a mixture of CO2 and nitrogen (called 'beer gas'), as well as a special tap.

brew on!
 
It's not perfect but you carbonate with co2 then attach one co2 with one nitrogen. Again not perfection but we will see in a few weeks.

Lochboy
 
The reason you use beer gas or nitrogen is to push the beer without adding too much carbonation. Stouts reguire very little carbonation. The amount of carbonation affect the size of the bubbles and therefore affects how creamy the beer tastes.

Less carbonation and the beer does not have the CO2 bite and is creamier tasting.
 
Lockboy,

What's your secret to using the tap-a-draft? I bought two setups a couple of years ago - completely untested, of course - and never got them to work properly. Ended up using probably a total of 6 gal of flat porter/amber to boil brats in. Tasted good, but one helluva waste of homebrew - and I cannot tell you the grief I've gotten from SWMBO over that escapade.

Here's what I did at botteling:
1) standard priming for 5 gal batch
2) filled TAD bottles using screw-on caps for all but one bottle
3) attached/screwed-on despensing rig to one bottle
4) attached 2 CO2 cartridges

Two weeks later (the min time I usually allow for conditioning and natural carbonation), I had flat, stale tasting beer. I figured there was a slow leak somewhere in the setup although I wasn't leaving beer and could hear no gas eascaping. I tried connecting one of the other bottles (the bottle-carbonated ones) to the despencer. This time, I could get it to dispense at a pretty slow rate and could never get all of the beer out of the bottle before it would go flat. At this point, the beer didn't taste stale like before, but I couldn't keep it carbonated beyond the first couple of days.

Anyway, what do you do that seems to make it work for you. I've recently begun kegging in the 5-gal cornies, so I'm probably not going back to the T-A-D, but it would be nice to get SWMBO off my back about it. I could maybe sell them to someone else, but only if I knew that they worked properly.

Thanks!
Focus
 
I'm following the same process... sounds like verbatim of the instructions. Although I have found the batches I "force" carb are not that carbonated.

I'm drinking a Best Bitter now that I filled one tap-a-draft bottle and primed with corn sugar. I put the remaining in a cornelius keg and cannot tell the difference flavor or carbonation wise.

It's my understanding that the tap-a-draft system is prone to trouble though. SWMBO's dad gave it to me for christmas to bring him beer when I visit I suppose. It's great for travel and that's my primary purpose of it.

Unfornately this batch started leaking when it carbonated. Maybe too much corn sugar. I tried twisted the cap tighter, but after a few days it leaked again. It aged for 3 weeks and when I removed the cap it sounded like a 3 liter coke. The beer is fine, but I still couldn't take a chance because we won't see the SWMBO in laws for 3 weeks.
 
The tap-a-draft system is pretty popular with the folks on the ratebeer.com forums, one tip I found over there is to use only one CO2 cart for dispensing, rather than two. Several people over there have said that they had problems with carbonation and the carts running out far too soon, and eventually determined that it was because the pressure from 2 carts was causing the pressure relief valve to open thus leaking out co2. They say that if you just use one (put in one fresh one and one empty one) that this doesn't happen and you can dispense an entire bottle with just the one cart.

I don't have one myself, but if you do it might be worth a shot.
 
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