Advice on priming beer to be served by hand pump

[Ralph]

Hello!

I have a brew down at the moment which I have done for a mates leaving do. He is English and likes "real ale" served through a hand pump. The brew is brewed and the party is next weekend. I have just been sampling the brew from the fermentor where it has been conditioning and it is tasting good enough that I had to have a pint as a sample.

Question is, should I add a little sugar to the brew (enough to carb 1 or so volumes) a couple of days before the party so that there is some hint of carbonation in the brew, or should it be served completely flat? Being a kiwi that was bought up with the extra fizzy cold stuff that is an excuse for beer here I have no idea??

Any help appreciated!

[Hutch]

I've carbed a couple of bitters (bottled) to 1.5 vols and they turned out nice, but I like mine on the fizzier end of bitter. Up to you really, the style guides give you a carb range (around 1 vol I think), if you think extra carbonation will improve the beer, do it.

I'm sure there'll be some differing opinions :)

[Smiffy]

How are you going to store and serve it?

"Flat" English ale is not fizzy, but it is certainly not devoid of dissolved carbon dioxide.

"Warm" is another word to be wary of. English real ale is served at "cellar" temperature, which is cool but not cold, and certainly not at summer "room" temperature.

If you add sugar only a couple of days before, the yeast won't have time to settle.

[Ralph]

Will be stored in a 20L plastic cube and will be served through a hand pump (as per the original question).

I know that about the flat and warm myths.

As I see it anything served through a handpump is not going to be served with any real pressure or otherwise the beer would all just keep flowing through the handpump, but it would be possible to have some dissolved CO2 in the beer when the container with the beer is opened to start handpumping. This dissolved CO2 would come through in the beer especially if it is all consumed in one evening as is likely to happen with my beer. From reading the interwebs it seems that in old style pubs the brewery would deliver the real ale and then the pub would often add a little priming sugar to get the fizz?

My beer will be stored in a 20 L plastic carboy. It could stand a very small amount of pressure?

[Smiffy]

You said he liked it from a hand-pump, you didn't say you had one, hence me double checking.

I have never heard of English pubs adding adding priming sugar. From what I have seen, cask ale is put into the cask before the fermentation has quite completed, then sealed. Then after delivery it has to be stored in position, in the cellar, for a few days to complete fermentation and to settle. When it is tapped, there is some pressure released, but very few psi at a guess. The beer in the cask is then open to the atmosphere, so under zero pressure. Depending on temperature, the beer will go flat in a few days, and very quickly after that, go off. If the cask was moved, or warm, it will go flat faster.

If your fermentation is complete, then you transfer it to the carboy, the motion will release just about all the CO2, and at that point it will need priming to give it some condition, but it will also need (I would say) at least 4 days to re-settle. It needs to be warm enough to allow the yeast to work, but cool enough to allow the CO2 to stay in solution, I would guess about 15C. You will need to allow excess pressure to be released, something like an airlock with a piece of polythene over the top held on by a (not too tight) elastic band.

Things are much easier with a keg in a fridge. I like about 6 psi at 10 degrees C, but my "taste" may have been altered by 8 years here.

[Ralph]

Ok. Casking before fermentation is quite complete would achieve the same thing as adding a little sugar, leaving a little CO2 in solution.

Other problem is that the party is an hour away on winding roads. I can probably give it 48 hours to settle when it gets there? Hmmm is more complicated than I first thought.

I know he will also have some Townshend beers there in the plastic bladders that will be served through a hand pump. I am guess these will have very little to no CO2 as well?

[Brendon]

I condition in jerry cans/cubes and you certainly get some pressure in them (even without priming sugar). I would say enough to qualify as real ale levels of CO2. I have had enough beers off gravity where the CO2 is the same as through the jerry can. 

If a 2 litre pet bottle can take 4 vols or so of CO2 then I recon the jerry can will take at least that. 

I wouldn't even bother with any extraneous CO2 head pressure or shenanigans like that. I would add the sugar to get the CO2 you desire.

Suck it and see but I reckon you will have a winner.

[Smiffy]

I think that the journey there will probably release too much of the CO2.

I'm just learning about carbonisation now, having recently moved from bottles to kegs. The first brew I kegged, I over did it, then left it with almost no pressure  (just enough to get it out of the tap) for a couple of days, and it was too flat. Then I learned that agitation very quickly achieves "equilibrium", i.e. add CO2, then agitate the keg and watch the pressure drop over a minute or so, and the same applies the other way, i.e. agitation with no pressure on top of it, and you will be left with flat beer.

One way you might overcome this is to prime it, let it secondary ferment at say 15 C for a couple of days, then chill it (down to close to 0 C) before transporting it, then at the destination, leave it to settle and warm up, the warming up will reduce the amount of CO2 which stays in solution under atmospheric pressure (it will still have CO2 on top of it, not air) hence make the CO2 want to come out of solution, thus giving it an acceptable level of brightness.

If it ends up being too fizzy, its easy to serve it "roughly" to cause it to release more of the CO2. If it ends up flat, there will be nothing you can do about it on the night.

[Ralph]

OK. So I have the option of using a 50L Sanke keg to get some carbonation into the beer via priming... Will add some dextrose, aiming for about 1.6 volumes of CO2... There should be a fridge up there that I can jam the whole keg into for 24 hours before we start serving it, so that should hopefully be enough to drop the yeast etc. The 6 days left will have to be enough for the secondary ferment!

Looking at simply attaching the handpump to the beer out of the Sanke attachment and leaving the CO2 in line open to let the air in. Will need some way of letting the pressure off slowly when first tapping it so that the yeast is not disturbed off the bottom too much. Not quite sure how I am going to do this just yet?

[Smiffy]

The beer pick-up (the "spear") in a sankey keg is very close to the bottom, so with the keg upright, yeast sediment will be picked up first. My suggestion is that if you prop up one side of the keg, the yeast may settle away from the pick-up. The big problem with kegs is you can't see what is going on inside them!

[Ralph]

I had been thinking a piece of wood might do a good job of propping the keg on the side like you suggest.

Yup, not being able to see what is going on in the keg is a bit of a worry, but fingers crossed it will all be fine!

Anyone know what size the thread on a standard NZ sanke connector (D-type?) is and where I might be able to buy a couple of spare female threaded barbs?

[Smiffy]

My G-type connectors (from the UK) have a 5/8" pipe thread however when I was looking for them, not all of them had the same threads. I got the fittings from my local diesel workshop (Kapiti Coast Diesel) as I knew they had racks of all sorts of pipe/hose fittings. I took the connect in with me and and found the fittings which fit. My beer tap has he same thread.

[Ralph]

Well I am sure you will all be pleased to know it was a success. Carbonated to about 1.5 volumes with dextrose in 4 days. Transported Keg up and dropped it off Friday morning. The plan was to drop it in the fridge for the day to get the yeast to drop, but the fridge was not big enough, so left it sitting in the lodge at ambient for Friday. Rigged up the fridge on Friday evening by stuffing insulation in the gap where the door would not close on the keg and chilled the keg overnight.

Let a fair wack of pressure off the keg on Friday evening. It was done slowly by using the pressure in the keg to push beer out a picnic tap into glasses... Was a bit cloudy on Friday evening but I did not have the keg on a tilt and so that was probably just picking up yeast off the bottom. Still tasted good.

Hooked the keg up to a hand pump on Sat evening, along with 20L of ESB and 20L of Stout. My brew was clear and tasted damn fine on the hand pump! Very pleased as were many of the party goers... who drank the 30L in the keg dry!