Homemade Randall

So I'm brewing with a couple of other homebrewers I met at a Society of Northeastern Ohio Brewers meeting and we're sampling some beers while our two 10 gallon batches come to a boil.

The guy who was hosting mentioned that he had a homemade randall (ie water filter casing) stuffed with home grown cascade hops hooked up to a keg of pale ale. I got pretty excited cause I've never had the pleasure of trying a beer run through a randall before so I poured myself half a pint to give it a shot.

The aroma was fantastic, I don't think I've ever had a beer (commercial, homebrew, or craft) that smelled so good. However, while the beer poured with a good amount of head, 2 fingers or so, the mouthfeel was completely flat. It seemed as though the hops in the randall had completely stripped the CO2 out of the beer.

Anybody else experienced anything like this or am I just crazy?

Seems to make sense, the carbonation running over the surface of all those hops. So just to add to your question then, would the use of a Randall therefore require overcarbing to put it just right into your glass?

-OCD

Randall can cause a lot of foaming since all those hops provide a lot of nucleation sites for bubbles. I find that if you drop the keg pressure to about 2 PSI (just enough to push the beer through and out the tap on the other side at a trickle) the foaming is minimal and you will not have flat beer.

Forgot to mention, it helps to cool the Randall as well. Pack ice around it in a cooler and just run the lines in and out under the lid.

Are there versions of randalls that the beer flows through under pressure?

I almost had a chance to try the DFH 90min through the real Randall, but "it wasn't working right." Laame. I was really looking forward to that.

It seems that if you put a considerable length of beer line on the "out" side of the randall, you could keep the beer under pressure while it is in contact with the hops, thereby reducing the chance of foaming and flat beer.

Orangevango said:

It seems that if you put a considerable length of beer line on the "out" side of the randall, you could keep the beer under pressure while it is in contact with the hops, thereby reducing the chance of foaming and flat beer.

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yeah i would think you would bump the presser up and use 20 feet or so of beer line, with that much line you can redissolve the co2