Home Made Beer Engine

[kook]

As I remember (jeez I still had black hair ) the casks - wooden ones at that - were on a fairly solid 'rack' which would have put the tap hole at just below knee level whilst the spile hole would have been at belly button height so the bar person just needed to extend arms to fill pint glass from cask pump, rather than grovelling on hands and knees to attempt normal tap filling. Beer casks aren't actually all that big - we tend to imagine them as massive great things like wine barrels but most of the pommy ones (19 gallons is common) are surprisingly compact when you see them in the flesh.

Yeah but cellar racks aren't normally used for serving under the bar. They're for the cellar

Gravity is a common serving method at beer festivals in the UK. Almost all the festivals I visited while living there served by gravity, with the exception of the GBBF. They use cooling jackets around the casks though.

I visited a few bars in Scotland that still serve by gravity - but they had one advantage, a freezing cold bar. Most pubs in England are now heated, the last thing you want is a 22 degree pint :icon_vomit:

Thats how they served all the beer at the Real Ale festival I frequented in the UK. Me and a bunch of old men with guts, grey hair and beards.

Which one?

Some of the festivals can be like that, some have a more diverse crowd though.

 

[sinkas]

Thats how they served all the beer at the Real Ale festival I frequented in the UK. Me and a bunch of Flatulant old men with guts, grey hair and beards.

 

[Bribie G]

Lived in Cardiff round the corner from a SA Brain pub and when the real ale craze first hit in the mid 70s they used to do a cask of SA on the bar on a Wednesday served by gravity. You wouldn't have known it was SA. Normally skull attack is served through a tight sparkler and comes out almost like a rich Yorkshire bitter. The gravity-served SA was headless but almost fizzy, and the hop profile was completely different - very refreshing but very different to what we were used to.

I wouldn't mind trying the cube plus pump idea if I could find some method of getting some CO2 to fill the airspace as I don't intend going for a full cylinder and connections setup but I don't think that even I could go 15 or 20 litres in a few days <_<

edit: for example collecting the CO2 from secondary in a big plastic bag attached to the cube and as I pump the beer the bag goes down... doesn't need to be 100% airtight, just good enough to discourage spoilage for a week or so.

 

[mika]

If you're not carbonating the beer with gas, natural carb for instance, and just want some gas on the top of the beer to prevent spoiling, a sodastream bottle is a cheaper alternative. No rental, $12 refills, and as it's not pushing the beer out, should last for quite a few kegs.

 

[RobB]

I like the idea of drinking barely carbonated ale from a cube. Homemade picnic kegs aren't for me. There's something about a DIY pressure vessel that gives me the heebie jeebies.

Would it be as simple as putting a tap on your secondary fermenter, or are there extra steps which I'm missing?

 

[komodo]

Bribie if you had a dual reg setup could you not just set the second reg to like 0.5PSI - wouldnt be enough to force beer out not to carb the beer but enough to stop oxygen coming in as you drained beer out yet 0.5 PSI wouldnt really adversely affect the cube.

Feel free to shoot me down in flames as its just a quick thought with out much real thinking going on (hey its friday morning...)