We had a fire at our house in January and just got back in (no injuries, mostly just smoke damage). The bad news for me is that we redid a number of things in the house during the rebuild which robbed me of all the space where my brewing stuff used to be (not to mention the fact that all tubing, etc was ruined by smoke). The good news is that I get to rebuild basically from scratch now. One of the things that really bothered me before was that my carbonation was always uneven. This was driven home this morning when a few bottles of stout exploded in our redone back room. I know it sounds complicated, but I'm determined to start dialing my process in to where my beer is consistently excellent. My recipes were always tasty, but the inconsistency in the packaging drives me nuts.
I used to bottle out of a bucket, but I'm thinking about changing to CP or a beer gun so that I'm bottling out of a keg that is already carbed to my liking. The challenge is that I do not have room for a keg fridge, so here is what I was thinking: transfer out of the primary directly to a keg, and seal it with a spunding valve. When it's sufficiently carbed, crash cool it in a pot of ice water on bottling day, and bottle from there.
Does this seem plausible?
Does crash cooling it the day of bottling give the carbonation enough time to get into the liquid so that the bottles will have carbonation?
Is the spunding valve going to be an accurate way of gauging how much carbonation is in the keg when it's at ambient temps?
If I'm out of my mind, feel free to tell me so. I'm just trying to think of ways with limited space and chilling capacity to get some more consistency in my packaging. The keg in the ice water always seemed to work when we have a party and I use a keg, so it seems like it might work. In my mind, anyway.
I used to bottle out of a bucket, but I'm thinking about changing to CP or a beer gun so that I'm bottling out of a keg that is already carbed to my liking. The challenge is that I do not have room for a keg fridge, so here is what I was thinking: transfer out of the primary directly to a keg, and seal it with a spunding valve. When it's sufficiently carbed, crash cool it in a pot of ice water on bottling day, and bottle from there.
Does this seem plausible?
Does crash cooling it the day of bottling give the carbonation enough time to get into the liquid so that the bottles will have carbonation?
Is the spunding valve going to be an accurate way of gauging how much carbonation is in the keg when it's at ambient temps?
If I'm out of my mind, feel free to tell me so. I'm just trying to think of ways with limited space and chilling capacity to get some more consistency in my packaging. The keg in the ice water always seemed to work when we have a party and I use a keg, so it seems like it might work. In my mind, anyway.