Dispensing Guinness on CO2

I know this has been beaten to death somewhere but couldn't find it stated like this. Friend likes Guinness, Just got a two tap Harrier. Wife would kill him at this point if he got another tank and such for another fridge.

SOO. I'm looking at the theory of how this works and it looks like if you had a two way switch. One for storing and one for serving. Keep the storing pressure around 5-7psi with a blow off set just above above that. Then have the serving side set to the 30psi or so you need to force it thru the disc. Smaller kegs would be in order so you don't waist as much CO2.

How long could the Guinness sit on the higher pressure without sucking up too much carb, Or will it matter since it gets stripped out anyway?

eh... not sure its even worth the hassle. I'll just tell him to get he proper tank...

Won't work. The CO2 in the head space will over-carbonate the Guinness, unless you bleed the pressure down after every pint. That will waste a lot of CO2.

The other option is to forgo the stout faucet and Nitro tank for now. Store & dispense at 7 psi...then put the glass on a Guinness Surge device.




Personally, I'd get the faucet, tank & regulator

I just saw that yeaterday for the first time. Pretty cool, but mixed reviews and i don't think they make it anymore. Also if you put a regular draft guinness on a surger it will foam over.

my neighbor has guinness on-tap using a regular beer faucet and co2 at 12psi. it doesn't pour with the thick head, but it tastes ok and doesn't seem too fizzy. he has a stout faucet that requires the higher pressure to work, but he can't find the nitrogen/co2 gas needed to make it work locally... all of the local gas suppliers do tank exchange only, and they don't have 'beer gas'..

marzsit said:

my neighbor has guinness on-tap using a regular beer faucet and co2 at 12psi. it doesn't pour with the thick head, but it tastes ok and doesn't seem too fizzy. he has a stout faucet that requires the higher pressure to work, but he can't find the nitrogen/co2 gas needed to make it work locally... all of the local gas suppliers do tank exchange only, and they don't have 'beer gas'..

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Agggghhh!!! Poor Arthur would roll over in his grave.

Just kidding...


That just seems odd...

I would think that if you looked for "Fountain Service" in the yellow pages you could find a distributor.

If you go to the welding shops and ask for "ALIGAL" instead of Beer Mix...maybe they just don't call it the same thing.

http://www.awisco.com/welding-safety-information/material-saftey-data-sheets-msds/aligal-msds/

Any Welding shop should be able to send out his tank to the gas plant to be filled. It's not rocket science. The plant might refer to it as ALIGAL...he just needs to specify what blend he wants. I get the 75% N2 - 25% CO2.

If that truely fails... then just get the tank filled with pure N2. The Guiness comes with the blend already in solution...so you just need to push it out through the restrictor faucet with the N2 @ 30psi or so. Now the Guinness he's already pumped up the co2 to 12 psi on...might be a bit foamy that way. Just pull the ring on the side of the U-type coupler to get rid of the excess pressure...swirl the keg around a bit...let it sit for a while...vent again. He can bleed off that excess CO2 if he wants...so it pours correctly.

Just a thought to get him back in the game.

chuggs said:

The other option is to forgo the stout faucet and Nitro tank for now. Store & dispense at 7 psi...then put the glass on a Guinness Surge device.

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The lengths people will go to for such a mediocre beer...

marzsit said:

my neighbor has guinness on-tap using a regular beer faucet and co2 at 12psi. it doesn't pour with the thick head, but it tastes ok and doesn't seem too fizzy. he has a stout faucet that requires the higher pressure to work, but he can't find the nitrogen/co2 gas needed to make it work locally... all of the local gas suppliers do tank exchange only, and they don't have 'beer gas'..

Click to expand...

Yuri Rage dispenses using pure Argon. Great thread (and pretty recent), using other pure gasses are discussed, recommend searching for it.

Actually Yuri uses 75% Argon 25% Co2, which is a common welding blend. If you use straight argon or nitrogen, the Co2 will break out and go flat eventually. The 25% is to maintain the Co2 level.
-Ben

That surge contraption is borderline ridiculous.

bendavanza said:

Actually Yuri uses 75% Argon 25% Co2, which is a common welding blend. If you use straight argon or nitrogen, the Co2 will break out and go flat eventually. The 25% is to maintain the Co2 level.
-Ben

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No, I use pure argon. I force carbonate the beer to the desired level using pure CO2, then switch to Ar for serving. I've never had a keg go flat with that method (even over the course of 3 weeks).

Yuri_Rage said:

No, I use pure argon. I force carbonate the beer to the desired level using pure CO2, then switch to Ar for serving. I've never had a keg go flat with that method (even over the course of 3 weeks).

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I was weighing the different methods of serving out of a nitro tap before I just kegged this last batch (started a thread in bottling/kegging). But for the CO2 carb/nitro(or Ar) pour method, I was worried about eventually losing carbonation, or at least getting below where I wanted my carbonation level to be. Interesting to know they'll stay at a good level for several weeks. Kegs in my house typically are flowing for much more than 3 weeks though, so I'd be interested to see how that method works for 2 months.

I ended up getting beer gas and kegging at 30 psi. Should be ready for the first pour when I get back from traveling on Friday evening...

Just got back from the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot. I thought it was interesting that the booth set up for Cork, Ireland was selling Guinness on tap and they had a big Nitrogen tank pushing it. No CO2 at all...just Nitrogen.

That's how I do it. I have no mixed gas so, like Yuri, I just carb to 1.6 vols for a week with CO2 and then push it with Nitrogen at 30 psi.

Timely conversation for me. I would like to serve a stout but don't want to invest in another gas tank. Currently I have a WineKeeper which is basically a wine on tap system, it uses Argon to blanket and push the wine. From the converstaion here is appears that I can use this gas to push a stout. I brew extract and the cost to brew a 5 gallon batch of a stout is only about $20 with a reused yeast. Yuri mentions that he has kept beer this way for 3 weeks, I am mainly an IPA fan but do enjoy a stout on occasion but it would take me a while to drink 5 gallons. What if it were 6 to 8 weeks or longer to finish the keg while on Argon?

Blackcows,
If you were to lose the fizz over extended time, I would think that you could bleed to head pressure, put it on co2 for a week at your desired pressure, than back onto the argon for however long you are satisfied.

Cool, If it were just about loosing fizz I could probably rack into two kegs, with 2.5 gallons in each one and switch accordingly.

Mike