Making a pressure barrel for cask ale

[dyqik]

I'm a Brit in the US, and I'm used to secondary fermenting and serving home brew from pressure barrels, which are the common way of cask serving home brew in the UK. These are a 5 gallon sealed plastic barrel with a tap near bottom and a pressure relief valve in the cap, to keep the pressure from secondary fermentation down to a few PSI. Nowadays many of the ones available in the UK also have a CO2 connection for 8g CO2 cartridges or the soda stream bottles to allow the cask to backfilled with CO2 as the beer is drunk to avoid oxidation.

Pressure barrels aren't available in the US as far as I can tell, so I've decided to make one. You can do cask serving with cornies, but as I don't have any kegging equipment, I'm starting from scratch.

The plan:
I have a 20l Speidel fermenter from Morebeer. These look almost identical to a pressure barrel, apart from the lack of a pressure relief valve. They appear to seal pretty well, and a thread on here talking about transferring out of a Speidel with CO2 pressure suggests that they should hold a few PSI with no trouble.

I plan to install a pressure relief valve and CO2 input port in the blank screw cap supplied with the fermenter. I have a couple of things I'm going to try for the relief valve. I have a Spunding valve on order from Morebeer, with a pressure gauge and relief valve attached to a ball lock gas in QD. I'll remove the ball lock QD and attach the remaining plumbing to the blank cap. I also have a pressure barrel combined CO2 in and relief valve on order from a home brew shop in the UK via Fruugo, which offers shipping to the US from many EU shops. I'm not sure which of these will work.

The total cost for the system should be around $80 - $50 for the Speidel and $20-$30 for one or other of the valve. If it doesn't work, I'll still have a Speidel as a secondary and a Spunding valve for when I get some kegs.

I'll update this when I get the valve parts and try and assembly this, and when I first try it.

 

[dyqik]

The pressure relief valve has now arrived, and I've drilled and fitted it to the blank cap on the Speidel. I had to sand the inside of the cap as there was a lot of embossed writing on it. First try, and it held pressure (I blew into the outlet tap to put some pressure in) for a few hours, with no lubrication of the seals or any other tricks, so I'm hopeful for being able to naturally carb in the vessel. I'll post a photo of the assembly later, once I've confirmed it works.

Unfortunately, I ordered a S30 connectorized relief valve, which has a non-standard M18x2.0 thread on it, so I can't couple CO2 to it yet. I've also ordered an adaptor that will connect 8g CO2 cartridges to it which I hope I can modify to connect larger CO2 sources to.

I've got a Harvey's Best Bitter clone just finishing fermentation that will be going into the barrel this weekend, so that'll be the first wet run of the system.

 

[Porchfddler]

I'm interested to know how well this works. I have a beer engine and 5 gallon stainless pin and bought a 3 gallon Speidel so I could make smaller batches. Hoping to somehow rig something like the Caskwidge to the top of this thing like I have in my pin. Thanks for the info so far.

 

[Grannyknot]

Dyqik, I have an authentic pressure barrel that I've been trying to sell. I think it may need a couple of small o-rings to be replaced. Would you be interested?

 

[dyqik]

I've not done a lot on this recently - the Best Bitter batch didn't work properly - I think because I had a pressure leak. I've since got a corny kegging setup, which rescued that batch - serving at 5-6 psi and 55F does a good job, although it's a little over carbonated. I could happily serve the beer at 60F I think, which would reduce the carbonation.

Unfortunately, the CO2 injector I got from the UK doesn't work very well with US spec 8g CO2 cartridges - they are too short to fit the plastic cartridge holder. And then there's still the problem of figuring out how to attach a regular CO2 system to the M18 x 2.0 threaded connector.

I'm going to work out how to attach a ball-lock gas in adaptor to the barrel, as that's probably the best option for most people in the US interested in doing something like this. However, I suspect that the cubitainers from e.g. Northern Brewer are the best cheap option for most people as they don't need a CO2 injection system to prevent over-oxidation - particularly with a beer engine to pump out of the cubitainer, so it can stay hidden in the cellar/fridge!

 

[highgravitybacon]

I've not done a lot on this recently - the Best Bitter batch didn't work properly - I think because I had a pressure leak. I've since got a corny kegging setup, which rescued that batch - serving at 5-6 psi and 55F does a good job, although it's a little over carbonated. I could happily serve the beer at 60F I think, which would reduce the carbonation.

Unfortunately, the CO2 injector I got from the UK doesn't work very well with US spec 8g CO2 cartridges - they are too short to fit the plastic cartridge holder. And then there's still the problem of figuring out how to attach a regular CO2 system to the M18 x 2.0 threaded connector.

I'm going to work out how to attach a ball-lock gas in adaptor to the barrel, as that's probably the best option for most people in the US interested in doing something like this. However, I suspect that the cubitainers from e.g. Northern Brewer are the best cheap option for most people as they don't need a CO2 injection system to prevent over-oxidation - particularly with a beer engine to pump out of the cubitainer, so it can stay hidden in the cellar/fridge!

Check out a polypin from US Plastic. There's quite a few threads on it. I have done several times pseudo cask from a Party Pig. Not much on that here, or really anywhere.

A party pig can be modified, though I didn't. Look at pictures of them. People have replaced the front wall of it with a schraeder valve and then used a CO2 tire inflator to add pressure to the container.

I have filled it with beer and added priming sugar just like one would do with a bottle. It works reasonably well, but if you leave the restrictor plate in place it pours kind of slow.

 

[Porchfddler]

Caskwidge parts modified to use with Speidel fermenter. I bought a Speidel fermenter to make a smaller amount of cask ale to go with my beer engine. I drilled a hole on the cap of a speidel fermenter attached a plastic cask bung to the underside with epoxy and epoxied the caskwidge housing into it. Here it is with the float attached. not tested yet but it appears to be airtight.

 

[dyqik]

So I've now got this working, after a little bit of fiddling and a rethink on the CO2 injection.

I've replaced the airlock fitting on the top of my 20L Speidel with a second spigot. I brewed another batch of bitter, fermented in the primary for a week, then transferred to the Speidel. I primed for 1.3 vols CO2 (about 1.5 oz of corn sugar), and sealed up the Speidel. I left it at 66F (final primary temperature) for a couple of days until pressure started developing in the cask, and then cooled to 55F for a week. At the end of the week, the beer was pretty well conditioned. I drew off a couple of pints under the internal pressure, then opening up the top spigot to allow air in to replace volume drawn out. Since the spigot is above the bottom of the Speidel, the beer runs clear after you draw out the few bits of yeast that settle in the spigot.

I'm just serving under gravity straight out of the lower spigot. Obviously you could hook a beer engine up to the spigot and use that if you have one.

After those first couple of pints, I hooked up a cask breather to my CO2 system and to the top spigot on the Speidel. This is a low pressure propane regulator (fixed at 0.4 psi) inline between by regulator (set at 10 psi for an APA in a keg, and feeding both that keg and the cask breather through a wye fitting). I have a combined check valve/shutoff valve on that line, which I keep closed when I'm not serving, just in case there's a slow leak on the Speidel. I only want to add CO2 when I'm drawing beer off in any case.

The cask lives in my fermentation chamber, which I set to 55F when I'm not fermenting. At the moment I have a Pliny clone in the fermentation chamber at 66F, so the cask is outside the chamber as the basement is about 62F at the moment. I'll put it back in the chamber if it gets too warm in the basement.

I think you can use a 20L Speidel as a cask to an existing CO2 kegging system for the cost of some hose, a wye or tee fitting, a check valve, a propane regulator and second spigot for the Speidel. Total cost would be about $85 ($50 for the Speidel, $6 for the second spigot, $13 for the propane regulator and the rest on hose fittings).

 

[Porchfddler]

Nice job I like how you worked it out!


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