king keg

[toylander]

I was treated to a beer brewing day at Stewarts Brewing in Edinburgh as a birthday present.
I went back a few weeks later to bottle my beer.

It now has me hooked and I have plans to start brewing beer and wine at home. (I will start off with a couple of kits)

I am offshore at the moment and have been reading up lots online.
One of the things that has my attention is a King Keg. I have read about people using a king keg for the one and only fermentation so that it carbonates from the start. Apparently it takes 7 to 10 days at 21deg then 7 to 10 days in a fridge to clear. The end product should be a carbonated beer ready to drink which has only taken 2 to 3 weeks from start to finish.

Has anyone tried this method?
If so could it be transferred to bottles at this point without priming as it is allready carbonated and then there would be no sediment in the bottles.

John

[Fil]

some corners cant be cut, a few products have come and gone over the years like brew and pour from the bag u buy and just add water to.

carbonated or conditioned beer isnt always the same as mature ready to drink beer, while your proposed method may cut out a bit of work involved in racking off the nice beer from any trub and the spent dormant dying and dead decaying yeast that have added the alcohol for you.
It wont effect the time elapsed between starting the kit and getting beer with a good flavour.

a top tap PB might be ok for you to experiment with but a bottom tap one would no doubt be submerged under trub and yeast..

But have a go and let us know

[BenB]

I doubt there would be much autolysis of the yeast cake at fridge temperatures so it probably would work but bottling carbonated beer without doing a secondary fermentation would be tricky without a beergun or such to purge the bottles with co2. You'd likely introduce a lot of oxygen into the beer during bottling even if you limited head space in the bottle and unlike when you bottle condition you wouldn't have a secondary fermentation to use up the oxygen. I guess it all depends how cold you like your beer and how quickly you'll drink the barrels worth ...

[Hogarth]

I don't see why this wouldn't work. The trick would be to seal the keg at exactly the right time, which I guess would be when it has almost reached final gravity. There'd still be enough activity over the next few days to give you full carbonation.

On the other hand, if you're going to bottle it anyway, I don't see how this is any easier than the usual method.

[toylander]

Thanks everyone for your opinions.
I will be getting a few kits under my belt and I will be bottling as per 'usual method'.

The barrel is sealed up from the start, the lid has a 15psi pressure release.

[orlando]

The barrel is sealed up from the start, the lid has a 15psi pressure release.

I could get to about 11-12 psi, you would be lucky to get to 15 but that is higher than you need for a keg beer. However, for bottling from the keg at those pressures you have real problems. Oxidation has been mentioned but the biggest problem is going to be getting the beer in the bottles without foaming, unlikely. The next problem is even if you manage to fill a bottle without losses the CO2 is going to come out of solution and the beer will become flat, think about how quickly fizzy drinks go flat after opening, even with the cap screwed back down tight. Someone has mentioned a beer gun and that would be your best bet to do this but let's just think about what you are trying to do. If the idea is to bulk condition before bottling I would rack the fermented beer from the fermentor to the KK and leave for a week or so in the cold to speed up clarifying, fining would speed up further. If you have a bottom tap (they are the better KK in my opinion) you can monitor how clarification is going and judge when to bottle. Do not think that a clear beer has no yeast in it and therefore priming won't have enough yeast to provide a secondary fermentation, it will. Take a look at commercial bottles of bottle conditioned beer, you can hardly see the yeast layer.

Your idea to start with kits is fine it will help you to learn the basics, some of which is included above.

[octoscott]

Thanks everyone for your opinions.
I will be getting a few kits under my belt and I will be bottling as per 'usual method'.

The barrel is sealed up from the start, the lid has a 15psi pressure release.

If you're in Edinburgh pay a visit to the Brewstore on Clerk St. The guys in there couldn't be more helpful.

[toylander]

After the comments I may give up on the idea of bottling from the keg. If I ever get a keg there would be no harm in filling a couple of bottles as an experiment.
I found the link where I read about the king keg;


http://www.thehomebrewboat.co.uk/fermen ... -pressure/

Interested in the opinions of the experienced brewers.

[toylander]

If you're in Edinburgh pay a visit to the Brewstore on Clerk St. The guys in there couldn't be more helpful.[/quote]


Thanks, I will do.