Putting real ale on tap

My wife's boss wants me to brew him some real ale. In exchange, he's having a hand pump flown in from England for me. How can I argue with that?

The only thing I've got to work out is where the beer will come from. The plan is no makeup CO2, not even a keg breather. That means 5 gallons at a time is out of the question.

I was looking at 2.5 gallon HDPE containers or Winpaks as a good alternative, but I was curious about natural carbonation. From my understanding, real ales will still pick up natural carbonation while sitting untapped in the cask. Will this be able to occur in a soft-sided container without it asploding?

I was also looking at the 5L mini-kegs, which seem like they'd be ideal, since I don't need a gas-in port. I just haven't found a place that has tapping hardware for them, just a rubber hammer-in bung. Anyone have a source?

Thanks!

-Joe

Did you tell your wife's boss that homebrew IS techinically real ale? I mean...it's nice to have the fancy pump, but I don't see why you couldn't store a corny upside down and let it naturally carb itself. Then let gravity tap it for you.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

Did you tell your wife's boss that homebrew IS techinically real ale? I mean...it's nice to have the fancy pump, but I don't see why you couldn't store a corny upside down and let it naturally carb itself. Then let gravity tap it for you.

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Never thought of that, good idea.

Have you seen this yet? Might help.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/fellow-homebrewers-meet-my-new-beer-engine-10529/

Yes, in fact I just told my wife the same thing - that every beer I make is real ale up until I force carbonate it. The question is serving it.

I gave consideration to an upside-down corny, but as I said, I'm looking at smaller quantities of beer so would like a smaller vessel to start with.

Yes, I've met that beer engine Chucke did pretty much exactly what I was thinking about. Mostly what I'm curious about is the natural carbonation bit. I wouldn't want to blow up a Winpack in the fridge. I'm not going to add any priming sugar, so I'm guessing it won't be an issue, but I was just wondering if there was some experience on the matter here already.

-Joe

I've carbed in one of my 6 gallon winpaks.... This was with 1/3 my normal priming sugar amount and 4 gallons of beer.

It bulged out but didn't explode... I could still push the sides in without too much effort. They're meant for shipping while sealed so from a design standpoint they would need to handle the pressure change from being filled with below freezing air at sea level and being moved to somewhere that has 100F heat at 12000ft. I didn't work out the pv=nrt on that, but I figured what the hell...

I'll be kegging a Stout soon to try with my new beer engine in a 5 gallon corny. eventually I want to find an actual firkin to use, but that will be 40L so it will only come out for special events.

The beer engine will create quite a suction, and if you keep the piston at the bottom of the cycle (Handel pulled forward) it can maintain the column for a long time. So as I see it you don't need to gravity feed the beer in. In theory any fermentation vessel should be able to work, you would just need an aspirator to let gas into the vessel to replace the beer that was pulled out.

For practical daily use I don't think the corny will work too well. I'm going to to be looking in to using mini kegs in the near future, but for now I plan on pulling out of a corny. I'll keep you posted.

nostalgia said:

I'm not going to add any priming sugar

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You're going to need to add something...

Bsquared said:

I'll be kegging a Stout soon to try with my new beer engine in a 5 gallon corny. eventually I want to find an actual firkin to use, but that will be 40L so it will only come out for special events.

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get a pin instead

http://www.beertech.net/e107_plugins/wrap/wrap.php?2

I think the 5L are the best solution.

Jaysus said:

You're going to need to add something...

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No. Traditional real ale uses fermentation byproducts to carbonate the beer at cellar temp. There is no additional carbonation via priming or anything else. It is called cellarcraft and is an important part of serving real ale. The casks have to condition (i.e. build enough carbonation ~1.5 volumes) before being tapped. Then, the CO2 stays in solution at cellar temps even with no external pressure.

This is why Americans joke about English drinking warm flat beer. In truth, the beer is carbonated at about 1.5 volumes and served around 50-55ºF.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

No. Traditional real ale uses fermentation byproducts to carbonate the beer at cellar temp.

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Right, so there has to be some sort of "secondary" fermentation in the serving vessel... I am under the impression that if the average homebrewer were to allow their beer to ferment out as per usual, those fermentation byproducts will not occur.

So the OP is either going to have to transfer to the serving vessel before fermentation is complete... or add some additional, fermentables to the serving vessel.

When I serve beer, via gravity, from my pin, I do both.

The conditioning is a simple temperature relationship. At the tail end of fermentation, you must control the temperature of the fermenting beer.

For example, if you allow your beer to ferment at 70º and it finishes there, it will have almost no perceptable carbonation.

However, if you control the temperature to cellar temp at the end of fermentation, and learn when to transfer to the cask, the correct balance of CO2 will be dissolved into solution with no external influence.

That is how it should be done.

Of course, there are no rules, prime away if it floats yer boat.

Jaysus said:

get a pin instead

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Thanks I over looked that.

Well, MoreBeer solved that problem by putting the 3-gallon kegs on sale. Just picked up two at $80 each. Not as cheap as a Winpak, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of them.

-Joe

I would consider adding a low pressure regulator/one way valve attached to a CO2 tank to preserve whatever natural carbonation you create. Take a look at this guy's website, he appears to have a good understanding of all the issues, including the desirability of adding a little oxygen to the real ale as you condition it. [URL="http://biohazard.veriqikdsl.com/index.html"/URL]

I agree, all homebrew is real ale, but it doesn't meet the CAMRA definition. To me the real issues are carbonation level, serving method and the beer itself - brew a good British bitter and you can't go wrong. I suggest the Bluebird bitter clone made by many homebrewers last year in memory of Michael Jackson.

why dont you just bottle it

climberguy said:

why dont you just bottle it

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Because cask ale is about more than just bottle conditioned beer. I want to hand pump that deliciousness from the cask and enjoy how it changes over the course of a week or two.

-Joe

climberguy said:

why dont you just bottle it

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because warm flat beer out of a bottle is a failure, warm flat beer out of a cask is like first tracks on a blue bird day...

oh i didn't relize real ale ment cask ale couldn't you keg it before it was compleatly fermented and it would carbanate