Do Pluto Guns Diminish Flavour?

[mtb]

A brew buddy and I often make the same recipes, but his usually taste better to me. Putting aside psychosomatics and possible variations in brew process, I wondered if it simply came down to how the beer was dispensed - because the main difference between he and I was that he dispenses using a fancy-pants perlick setup on his kegerator while I'm still using stainless steel pluto guns like a pleb.

To test, I transferred some of my latest Zythos IPA batch into my portable party keg with a brumby tap and proceeded to have a sip from a full schooner poured from a) the party keg with tap, and b ) the corny keg with pluto gun. Then I finished both schooners and continued to have another.. it's a nice IPA. The differences were very apparent - although I can't pinpoint what exactly the difference is.. and I put that down to lack of experience, but I felt there was a lack of maltiness in the beer dispensed from the Pluto gun.

My initial thoughts are that the Pluto gun, when dispensing at 80kpa @ 2deg Celsius, is losing some of the carbonation as it agitates the beer as it poures, so I'm drinking a less-carbonated pour compared to the party keg with tap.

 

[Weizguy]

fancy-pants perlick

I think you're right with the psychosomatic effect.
In fact, you have Perlick envy.
I serve with a Pluto gun, until the kg freezer is running, and have no problem with it.
Have you tried cleaning the gun by running hot cleaner through it and a nice hot, then cold water rinse? It's like a make-over for your beer gun.

 

[mtb]

haha.. yes I definitely have Perlick envy. I'll try giving the Pluto a good soak & wash and see how I go from there

 

[Lethaldog]

I've got two taps on the fridge and a couple of plutos for when I have more than 2 beers running and have never found them to be a problem!

 

[Fylp]

I had a few flavour issues recently and was wondering if I was going to finish the keg or tip it. I then gave my gun a good clean and it is one of my fav beers. Mine seems to gunk up a lot more than my tap.

 

[lukiferj]

Also worth cleaning/changing your beer line to the gun. Something a lot of people dont seem to bother too much with.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

And never leave beer in the line, especially if it's polythene.

A few years back I was called in to do some work for a consultancy, their client had a multi bottle wine dispense system with inert gas counterpressure, all beautifully plumbed to a central station. They were getting huge and seemingly random problems with oxidation.

It turned out that some nong had used PE hose for some of the runs: PE is a very poor oxygen barrier so the wines were oxidising in the PE lines.

Commercial dispense lines are a special coextrusion, one of the polymers is a reasonably high oxygen barrier.

Lots of people seem to think that the beer is under positive CO2 pressure so the oxygen can't diffuse in. Unfortunately that's not how physics works.

 

[pcmfisher]

There's a lot of that psychosomatic stuff that happens in the homebrew world.

 

[Mardoo]

Like style guides?

 

[Mr B]

More likely the stainless factor

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

There's a lot of that psychosomatic stuff that happens in the homebrew world.

 

[peteru]

Another factor could be serving temperature. A beer that's too cold will not exhibit many qualities.