Not the Beer!

I'm a homebrewer and need the CO2 to carb my brew and push it out of the kegs.

Luckily I have a backup, but I'm making sure there are no leaks. :oops:
 
Can't yesterday's beer bubbles be frozen out of the air with a phase change cascade arrangement of pumps and coils? Like how the liquid gas industry does it?
 
devils4ever said:
I'm a homebrewer and need the CO2 to carb my brew and push it out of the kegs.
Luckily I have a backup, but I'm making sure there are no leaks. :oops:
Click to expand...
Why? Do you kill the beer entirely and the carbonate it with pressure CO2 over it afterwards?

A firkin (72 pints), fitted with spiles from any one of the local breweries here is delivered cold, and still live.
It is provided with two wooden spiles. One is porous, and will let in enough air to keep the pressure right for the tap. The other is hardwood, which you put in when you leave it overnight. It needs the wet canvas cooler as well.

Stand the barrel for 12 hours on the slightly tilted cradle (supplied), then tap in the spile, and wait a minute.
Then hit the main tap in.

The CO2 bubbles are the small type with fine head, and will keep delivering clear (real) beer with a fine white head for about 4 days (if it lasts that long). I never had to pump in CO2 into a good brew yet. The post-brew CO2 by pressurization yields larger, oily-looking bubbles and a head that dies quickly. And yes - my pals would have words with me if I resorted to "head foam" additives.

Oh Man - see what you have done? You got me gone all sentimentally recalling the times I would bring the beer to the summer camp. That's not gonna happen again anytime soon! :bawling:
 
I'm not an expert on beer as it did get the better of me......once!
Being raised in Milwaukee, we went on brewery tours fairly often as any time we had out of town guests, we went on a brewery tour. Every brewery tour that I have been on told us that they capture the CO2 from the fermentation process and use the to carbonate the final product.
 
graham-xrf said:
Why? Do you kill the beer entirely and the carbonate it with pressure CO2 over it afterwards?
Click to expand...

Homebrewers ferment the beer without any containment. When the yeast does it thing, it releases CO2 and alcohol. The CO2 is released and the alcohol stays. After fermentation is over, the beer is transferred into kegs and place under CO2 pressure to carbonate. There are those homebrewers that use sugar to ferment the beer. This is done for bottles and can be done for kegs although I don't know of any homebrewers that do this. After the beer is carbed, CO2 pressure is used to push out the beer from the keg.
 
As I recall, in the UK, beer is dispensed with a pump. In the US, AFAIK, the barroom tap is a valve and beer is dispensed by virtue of the CO2 pressure.
Frat parties and the like often have an auxiliary pump to pressurize the keg in lieu of a tank of CO2. Canned and bottled beer is still pressurized with CO2 to give those tiny bubbles that I know and love.

I recall one sunny afternoon sitting at the kitchen table and giving my wife a lesson in Stokes Law by watching the streams of bubbles rise in the beer. (The bubbles started out small and closely spaced but as the rose, the pressure was reduced and the bubbles and the spacing grew larger. An elegant way of demonstrating Stokes Law working against the bubble buoyancy.)

There was an interesting program on NPR last fall concerning bubbles in brew.
www.npr.org

Raise A Toast To Building Better Beer Bubbles Through Chemistry

Spanish scientists have identified the specific gene in yeast that's responsible for the foamy head on your glass beer. And that discovery could lead to what we've all been wishing for — more long-lasting foam on top of our ales of the future.
www.npr.org www.npr.org
 
@RJSakowski : Excellent!
I have also, at a time now far past, been enjoyng a life on a deck chair, watching a twin trail of bubbles spiraling upwards, getting bigger until they contribute to the head on the top.

Forgive that this is a bit parochial, but this is what the swamp cooler firkin looked like.
It had a little tent of it's own. They put plastic boxes with sides 9" high underneath, with water in. There was an arrangement of plastic pipes with push-together junctions, and leak holes all over the canvas, fed with a small aquarium fish-tank pump that kept it dripping.

Well - you get the idea..
gx3camp-beer.jpg
 
Dhal22 said:
Beer in cans, bad............ Beer in bottles, good.
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Right now the stores don't have a method of taking returned cans or bottles and keeping their employees safe.
Previously I could count on the trade-in value to help fund the next supply.
I may end up just throwing them into the blue recycle bin.....
-brino
 
I recycle both but can't drink beer in a can. I pour it into a glass.
 
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