Nevalicious
Hardcore Cuber...
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Malted was right, cable gland, JG fitting etc. BUT... That was the complicated version. Same thing can be done much more easily.
I used a speciman jar (new) of about 250-300ml. We get or sugar adjunct samples delivered in them. But any straight sided jar with a lid you could drill would work.
You need
The jar
Something to make a screen out of, i used the lid of another jar cut to size.
About 10 inches of 10mm OD beer line
3 standard HB fermenter airlock grommets
- Drill a 10mm hole (maybe 11) in the very center of the lid of the jar, and another one halfway between the first and the edge of the lid
- take whatever you are using as your screen and drill the same sized hole in the middle
- fit grommets to all three holes and make sure that you can shove the 10mm line through it, but that it fits very tightly so it can act as a seal and physical holder.
- drill a bunch of holes in the screen to hold back whatever you are going to put in the randal
- cut the line into two pieces like in the picture, use voiling water to help you bend one over to be the "tap"
- one goes through the center, so it almost reaches the bottom of the jar when the lid is closed, onto this one you put the screen, so it will sit say 3/4s of the way up the jar
- the bent over bit of line gets pushed in so it just comes through to the inside of the lid by a half a cm or so and picks up beer from the very top.
Put stuff in the randal, shove the in line up your beer tap (mine fit tightly and neatly, ymmv) and pour. It will froth and carry on a bit, but once things are cold and if you make your flow nice and slow, you should be able to tweak it till you can pour without too much loss.
Did it work?? Depends. With really aromatic or flavoursome things, yeah - pretty damn well. So a vanilla pod to go with a porter worked a treat, a couple of squashed cumquats for a saison, great. But for actual hops... Less sucessful. It certainly worked, but because the volume is so low, the contact time is really short and hops seemed to need a bit more than they were getting for any huge effect.
I christened them a "Randal Shot" because the idea is to load the randal, use it to give just a few beers a "shot" of a different flavour, then change to something else. Easy and fast to load new ingredients, you dont need very much of the ingredient so it doesn't cost a lot to experiment and it comes off the tap easily so you dont have to muck about to pour the beer straight up if you want. Not supposed to be a serious alternative to a bigger randal, just a bit of a fun gimmick for a party or event.
Heres another photo to help you see the construction, just sub in grommets where you see other stuff.
Somewhere or another on the internet there are a few photos from club night at the last ANHC where we gave a few of these jiggers a nice work out. They seemed to go down well.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply. Going to give this a shot I reckon. Have to see if the JG beer line I have fits up my Perlicks, but other than that, I can see this being a goer for an experiment at the next case swap at my place!
Muchly appreciated!
Nev
