Pressure barrel

[kallen100]

Hello, this is my first post to this forum and it’s the first Brewing help forum I have subscribed to.

I have a brew currently in fermentation (23 Litres) and I’m planning on using a pressure barrel and bottles for the secondary fermentation. The pressure barrel only has a 20 Litre capacity, so the excess will be bottled. I have the following questions:
1. How much beer do I put in the pressure barrel, i.e. do I fill it to the top or just put 19 Litres in?
2. Wilkinson’s sell a Brewing Sugar for about £2.00 – can I use this as priming sugar, or do I use normal white sugar (tea/coffee sugar)
If anyone can help me to answer and of the above, it would be most appreciated
Thanks in advance
Karl

 

[Revvy]

Unfortunately this is an American forum, and pressure barrels are NOT that common to us. You may have better luck asking questions about working with them on either the English or Australian homebrewing forums. Very few if any of us even know what these things are. I know what they are because I've googled info when folks have come on here. But I have no answers to specific questions.

If you don't get any responses I would post it on the Brewuk forums. We can help you with just about everything else about brewing. But specific pressure barrel info is pretty scarce on here.

 

[kallen100]

Revvy, thanks for your swift reply - I will post on the BrewUK forum as you suggest.

thanks again

 

[Mirabotz]

vewy vewy intow-westing...hahahaha I'm wayting fow a Wondowbwew...if it lives up to the developers claims, it will do all this AND have a conical fermenting lower section to bootl and not need any lil co2 cartridges...

This pressure barrel sounds like a self dispensing corney keg...sort of...so I looked them up...I'd love to try it out, but not for the bargain price of 55.00 British Pound Sterling(which I would gladly pay) but the shipping to Egypt from UK is something like 470.00 Pound Sterling!! OUCH!

I think i'll trundle my fat @$$ over to the alfa market, and see If I can find a pressure sprayer I can modify to dispense beer to me, rather than death to garden pests...just have to figure out how to get CO2 into it rather than handpumping air into it (3-fingers up-scouts honor--I would NEVER do such a vile thing...unless I could guarantee ALL of it would be consumed within a few hours...then MAYbe..in a pinch...)

WHY don't us Yanks use these anyway? might save a bunch of $$ over corney kegging...and it's got a tap(sorta) built in...easy transport, easy serve...SEEMS like a good idea... or am I missing something critical here?

 

[ajf]

Welcome to the forum.

I used to use a pressure barrel for English style Bitters. I am not so sure that it would work too well for more highly carbonated beers. I never filled it right to the top, but used to leave a small amount of head space, similar in proportion to the space you leave in a bottle when bottling. Sometimes I'd leave more space if the brew wasn't big enough. This never caused me any problems.

As for priming sugar, granulated sugar works just fine, but you need a bit less than you would if you used dextrose. Google priming sugar calculator for examples.

If you are pressure barreling some of the brew, and bottling a few bottles, the bottles will probably need more priming sugar that the draught. It may be worth priming the bottles individually if you are only doing a few bottles.

Hope this helps.

-a.