beer engine

[Garth]

yes, you can but you'll need some jiggery pokery going on.

The ways I have heard it done are with a cask breather adding the smallest amount of CO2 as the beer it taken out, or very very low pressure added from the gas regulator. I did hear about someone turning the full cornie upside down and taking the beer from the gas in post....haven't tried that one myself

[hotmog]

You also need a check valve (otherwise known as a demand valve) like this one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BEER-HAND-PUM ... 43a83a6449 to prevent the beer "running on" straight through your beer engine if the pressure in the cornie is greater than that outside.

[weiht]

It's pretty simple really. Just insert the beer line from the beer engine into the out ball lock, make sure u vent and purge all the co2 pressure before, and start pumping as normal and leave the vent open.

Make sure the keg is below the beer engine height or else the beer will keep flow due to siphoning effect.

[Garth]

It's pretty simple really. Just insert the beer line from the beer engine into the out ball lock, make sure u vent and purge all the co2 pressure before, and start pumping as normal and leave the vent open.

Make sure the keg is below the beer engine height or else the beer will keep flow due to siphoning effect.

Yes, that will work but the beer will be spoilt within 4 days to a week as you are sucking lots of air in as the beer is taken out. Fine if you want to drink it quickly, but it's better with the smallest amount of CO2 on it to keep it fresh.

[JontyR]

It's pretty simple really. Just insert the beer line from the beer engine into the out ball lock, make sure u vent and purge all the co2 pressure before, and start pumping as normal and leave the vent open.

Make sure the keg is below the beer engine height or else the beer will keep flow due to siphoning effect.

Yes, that will work but the beer will be spoilt within 4 days to a week as you are sucking lots of air in as the beer is taken out. Fine if you want to drink it quickly, but it's better with the smallest amount of CO2 on it to keep it fresh.

I've used a beer engine with mine, I'm really new to cornies so could be missing something, but I've found that I've needed a fair amount of pressure to keep the seal on the keg and I suspect that if I'd been using a cak breather, the seal on the corny wouldn't be maintained..... Possibly a new thread for me to start rather than hijack whiteys....

My set up was the same as hotmog's beer out to checkvalve and beer engine attached to that. Due to the beer engine line being a larger diameter than the line coming from the keg (3/8 in 1/2 out) I kept the 1/2 line as short as possible to try and make sure it was full so to speak.

[hotmog]

I used to use a cask breather on my cornies but found, as Jonty says, that the absence of pressure inside the keg meant that the seal was not always fully maintained. I also suspect that as the keg became emptier, the internal pressure drop created by drawing off a pint was insufficient to open the breather valve fully. So while some CO2 was being admitted, there would still be a slight negative pressure inside the keg and over time air would be drawn in through the compromised seal.

What I do now with a full cornie is to pressure it up to 30 psi to seal the lid tight, then disconnect the CO2 line from the IN post. When I want to dispense, I connect the CO2 line, vent any excess pressure and set the regulator to around 5 psi for the duration. I usually turn off the main gas valve on the cylinder as well as the turning off the regulator screw when I'm done for the evening, just in case (I've had empty cylinders before due to slow leaks from the lid seal).