• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

5L Minikeg to Cask Ale Project (Is this crazy?)

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Arrheinous

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2012
Messages
715
Reaction score
126
Location
Akron
So I'm really getting into cask ales but it's tough to find a good place around here. There's just one sports bar nearby that has it and their pick of beers for it is so-so.

The 5L minikegs that places like Bell's put out would be a cheap, sturdy vessel for mini releases of cask ale. But I've got too much homebrew in stock right now to screw around with buying and drinking a whole extra 5L of someone else's beer.

But then I got an idea: if I can bring the minikeg up to 55ish, vent all the CO2, pour off some of the beer, and add the yeast/sugar/finings/oak chips to simulate a cask then I'm good to go. And there's 5L of Bell's Best Brown ale in stock which would be a good style to test this on.

There's just a week until a friend's going away party and he's a big beer fan so this would be something cool to try out. I have everything else I need - can even just add some of the ESB I brewed last night right into the minikeg for the secondary fermentation.

My only question is can I properly remove the gas vent to put in my additions with out having the thing blow up in my face? I've seen projects involving empty 5L kegs but is there going to be a sanitation issue with a full one?
 
I would encourage you to research "Poly Pins".

I had the same idea (minikeg) a while ago and after doing some digging and chatting with a few folks, IMO, polypins are the way to go for cask ale.

:mug:
 
Just from the first picture on the site (with the twist off spigot) I can see those Poly Pins will be useful.

Thanks for the heads up!

EDIT: Haha! The LHBS sells 1G cubetainers with spigot for pretty much what US Plastic sells them for.

:mug:
 
Back
Top