We have beer!

[Michele Craft]

haha! A "nibble" is indeed half a byte, and entirely inedible

Gotta say your notion of "snacks" has me hankering for some of that

Cheers!

Seriously me too!! That all sounds lovely! And I love pork scratchings (pork rinds or cracklins here). Had them for the first and only time 2 years ago on a trip to Tennessee and Kentucky at a brewery in Kentucky and they were hot and still popping when to came out. Sooo good!! There's pre-made bagged versions here in the US but I'm not even going to bother to try them. They look so bland VS what we had.

 

[Michele Craft]

Just did a few test pours of the Sam porch rocker and our new hefeweizen from a local place. New one came cold but we let it sit for about 5 hours I nthe keezer before tapping (may be an important detail later)

First, the regulator is darn finicky. Just a little bump up jumps it up a lot after a few minutes. A bit hard reading at an angle so we may rethink location but for now I just zoomed in with my camera to make sure it was at 10psi.

Cleaned two glasses properly and the Sam porch rocker (shady/radler type) just doesn't seem to hold a head. I wouldn't really expect it to and I do see little bubbles occasionally coming up in the glass and it's not flat so I'm calling it good. That pour is in the glass where you see the barrett's pub logo.

The hefe I poured into a red solo cup to purge the water from the lines and the first few pours were almost all foam. The glass where you don't see the logo is the 4th pour of the hefe. Lots of foam, 3 fingers? The head does stay for quite a while and as I'm typing this 20 minutes later there's still a slight ring of foam. The lacing in the glass looks nice and in fact even in another one we poured in a red solo cup had good lacing. When I poured some of the one from glass into solo for my husband to try, a fair amount of foam reappeared so I'm wondering if I just never realized it and a hefe is a bit foamy in general. I believe at the carbonation step they are made to higher pressure but I assume leaving my lines at 10 is fine. Just looks alarming pouring out.

 

[DuncB]

@Michele Craft
The shandy looks true to form for it's contents. Similar the wheat beer really. If i had a wheat beer on one of my taps I would have it at a higher pressure as it's meant to be more than 3 vols nearer 3.6 for a hefeweizen. So you'd use one of the regulators separate for any wheat beers at a higher pressure and the other regulator at lower psi for other beers.
The radler could probably stand a higher pressure because sodas and hard seltzers are carbed a bit more.

 

[DuncB]

But as the party is imminent I wouldn't fiddle at the moment. Bake Bake Bake those nibbles.

Mr Porkys Pork scratchings are worth eating from the packet. They have rebranded but still taste great, so salty, you know they are good for you.

 

[Michele Craft]

@Michele Craft
The shandy looks true to form for it's contents. Similar the wheat beer really. If i had a wheat beer on one of my taps I would have it at a higher pressure as it's meant to be more than 3 vols nearer 3.6 for a hefeweizen. So you'd use one of the regulators separate for any wheat beers at a higher pressure and the other regulator at lower psi for other beers.
The radler could probably stand a higher pressure because sodas and hard seltzers are carbed a bit more.

So raising the pressure on the hefe wouldn't bring even more foam?

 

[DuncB]

Hope your party went well.

 

[Michele Craft]

Hope your party went well.

It was a smashing success even tho the weather most certainly did NOT cooperate with heavy rains most of the day. The kegerator got rave reviews with multiple people asking if we could give them the plans (nope, sorry, not plans for this one) or build them one (most definitely NO according to my husband lol!). We had a great time despite the weather since we were able to turn our 3 car garage into event space and have a pretty open house so people didn't feel crammed in.

Next project is a jockey box since this kegerator will have a permanent location in the basement so for parties, I'll have a 2 tap jockey box so we can just pull kegs out of the basement into big ice vats with a 50 or 70' coil in the jockey box. One of my friends suggested a plate chiller but as I understand it, if you can't keep the keg below about 55, the plate chillers don't have enough surface area to properly cool but more research to be done since it'd take a lot of ice to put in a trash can to keep 2 kegs sufficiently cold I'd think.