Ferment, Carb, and Serve from the same Container

[autobaun70]

I've never seen or heard of anyone doing this, but figured I would ask.

I actually got this thought looking at an article on traditional cask beers. Would there be a problem in fermenting in a keg, and then prior to fermentation completion sealing the keg for carbonation, and then letting the beer age. Finally, serve from the same keg.

 

[Revvy]

Actually it's pretty common, especially in England. Look up pressure barrels. And even in America we have "The Beer Machine."

Pressure Barrel-Note the nipple on top for co2, and the spigot to serve from.

The Beer Machine 2,000- Note the tap on the front and all the geegaws for carbonating it.

 

[Dwain]

Forget it, Revvy beat me to it

 

[marrty24]

Wouldn't you worry about your beer sitting on the yeast and potentially picking up some off flavors? Or are those flavors part of the style of beer?

 

[badmajon]

I wish some sort of ball lock device existed that would hold pressure up to a certain point, say, 8 psi for bitters, then release the excess. It'd make cask ale production easy.

 

[Bokonon]

I wish some sort of ball lock device existed that would hold pressure up to a certain point, say, 8 psi for bitters, then release the excess. It'd make cask ale production easy.

Look up info on a spunding valve or adjustable pressure relief valve. Pretty easy to do that

 

[Wyrmwood]

Wouldn't you worry about your beer sitting on the yeast and potentially picking up some off flavors? Or are those flavors part of the style of beer?

Seems kind of odd to me to leave it on the yeast cake and force carb... but I don't think the volume (and therefore pressure) is enough to affect the yeast negatively, though the force carb certainly changes the equation.

On the other hand, if you are cask conditioning, then it's a practice that dates to at least 424 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cask_ale

 

[rycov]

i don't think it would be a big problem. if you did it in a keg you would have to trim your dip tube. as far as time its on the yeast, as long as your not aging it for a long time i doubt anything negative would happen. and for the pressure, there is always some yeast sediment at the bottom of my kegs, the pressure never seems to cause of flavors there (i know that it is a lot less yeast, but still). plus given revvy's post, its already being done, so i think it would be a perfectly acceptable way to do it.

 

[Revvy]

Wouldn't you worry about your beer sitting on the yeast and potentially picking up some off flavors? Or are those flavors part of the style of beer?

People have sat beer up to a year in primary for a month with no "off flavors" from the yeast. I've left a beer 5.5 months. And many of us long primary for a month as standard practice, the whole yeast contact issue is really over rated, and even the ones who original wrote about it (John Palmer) have back pedaled on it- so that's not a big issue.

Cloudiness from yeast and a yeasty flavor I think would be more of an issue...but that's not an off flavor. Like someone mentioned, folks cut the diptube and secondary and sever right in the keg.

I think the more effective design is the British one where the spigot is at the top- I don't know if there's a tube attached running to the bottom and the pressure moves the beer up and out the spigot like the out put post (or whatever it's called in the keg) but to me if that draws the beer out above the trub, I think that's great.

 

[rycov]

People have sat beer up to a year in primary for a month with no "off flavors" from the yeast.

what?

 

[Revvy]

what?

What what???? There's a few people on here who have posted that they've done it.....Probably not on purpose, but their beer turned out fine...those were the first clue many of us had that the whole "Autloysis is a given/Yeast contact is bad" notion was utter bull****.

 

[ajf]

I used to use a pressure barrel, but I never used it for fermenting. I fermented in buckets/carboys, and then racked to the pressure barrel in the same way one uses a corny keg. On mine, the spigot was at the bottom, but it was attached to a hose with a float attached to the other end. This was great, because you would drain the beer from the top, thus avoiding picking up sedimentation. By the time you reached the end of the barrel, the yeast had settled, and you got clear beer from start to finish.
As for autolysis, Palmer didn't invent it. It was a well known fact for a long time before Palmer started writing.
If it weren't for autolysis, Marmite would not exist.
Autolysis is caused when the yeast dies, and starts to decay.
The quality of the yeast that is available nowadays is much better than what was available in the past, so it is much more difficult to start killing today's yeast than it was 20 or 30 years ago. As a result, with today's yeast, it is much more difficult to create autolysis than it used to be. Of course 20 years from now, things could be very different.

-a.