Then I threw a party.

The party was a small beer tasting party for about a dozen of my friends. Everyone had to bring some winter/holiday beers to share and I tapped the oatmeal stout.

Thar she is.  Not too much carbonation, obviously, and no head to speak of. Once it came up to cellar temperature it was pretty good, though. A little roasty, smooth mouthfeel, and a lingering oatmeal flavor that I really liked.

The next day it was damn tasty, too. It was left in the fridge with the bung still open, so it decarbed a bit and started to oxidize just a little. It’s probably about at its peak, if you’re into real cask ale. If not, then you’d probably think it sucks. Too bad for you, but since I’m the only one drinking it, it doesn’t really matter. This needs to get finished in the next day or so before it really turns. There’s only about a pint or so left, though, so it’ll be gone tomorrow.

In summary: beer was good, brewing was fun, minikegs are easy and handy if you’re throwing a party. I don’t know how I’m going to continue to use them in the future. If I figure it out, I’ll post about it.

Oh, also I brewed again a week ago. There’s an IPA fermenting with some Wyeast British Cask Ale yeast. That will go into bottles or a minikeg or something in another week.

And if anyone was wondering, the best beers of the party were the Iron Hill Winter Warmer and the N’ice Chouffe. No surprise on the last one.

Digging through some old notes, I found a recipe that looked like it would be hard to screw up. I had all the grain on hand and my homebrewer friend was kind enough to pick up some yeast and hops for me. So at 9:30 on Saturday night, I fired up my kettle.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll recall that I was last brewing using the Brew-in-a-Bag technique (or BIAB as the internet likes to call it). I kept with it but with a few modifications to my last attempt. For starters, I decided to make a slightly larger batch. Three liters is fun and all, but I wanted a little more beer this time and chose to go for one a half gallons. Big shot, I know.

Last time I did this, I “crushed” my grain in a blender. I have no problem with doing it that way, theoretically. But from a practical standpoint, we no longer have a blender. The base cracked and we have yet to replace it, so I had to find some other way to get at the barley. I had once used my coffee grinder for a tiny starter mash, so I thought I might try that again. Well, I did it but I don’t think I’d recommend it. See, this recipe called for me to crush three pounds of grain and it took for-freaking-ever in the coffee grinder. I eventually did it, with flour going everywhere and a bunch of kernels still uncrushed. Good enough.

Another change to my plan of attack was that I didn’t worry too much about low efficiencies or anything. If I hit my numbers, fine. If not, oh well. It made for a much more relaxing evening.

The recipe:

Oatmeal Stout
2 lbs 10.2 oz (70%) Marris Otter
8.4 oz (15%)Rolled Oats (I used Quaker Old Fashioned oats)
2.8 oz (5%) Roasted Barley
2.8 oz(5%) Chocolate Malt
2.8 oz (5%) British Crystal 50-60
0.5 oz UK Goldings @ 60 minutes (4.5% AA, hop to about 30 IBUs)

Pretty simple. Except that I didn’t take into account the increased batch size and my small brew kettle.

That was a little tight. But it didn’t actually overflow, so no worries.

I got nine quarts of water up to 165F and mixed in all that grain. The temperature only dropped to 160, so I stirred it until it hit 155 and put a lid on it. I had to hit it with some heat once in a while, but was able to keep it at around 152 +/- 2 for an hour. Then I pulled out the grain bag, squeezed it a little bit (which is tough because it’s hot and I haven’t destroyed all the nerves in my fingers yet), and turned the heat up.

The hops went in, the boil was uneventful, and my immersion chiller worked like a charm. The real kicker is that at the end I checked the hydrometer and it read 1.048. Now let me explain something here. I have had terrible luck hitting my gravities for a while, which is one of the reasons I quit brewing two years ago. It’s frustrating. This time I just assumed I’d have a 60% brewhouse efficiency, but like I said above I wasn’t going to obsess over it. With the above recipe and a 60% brewhouse efficiency, a 1.5 gallon batch would have an original gravity of 1.051. My gravity of 1.048 means my efficiency was actually 57%. While that may suck, it was damn close to what I had been expecting.

I was a little excited, I’ll admit. But then I thought, “There’s got to be a catch here.” My final volume must be way off. I dumped the wort into my fermenter (which I had conveniently measured and marked) and saw that I was nearly SPOT ON. Just a hair under the six quart mark. HOLY CRAP!

On top of that, my Wyeast Yorkshire Ale yeast that I smacked at 7:00 was ballooning like crazy at 12:30 when it was time to pitch it. Why have the stars aligned for me tonight?

Actually, I don’t care why.  All I know is that this makes me want to brew some more. Which is good, because my friend bought me three packs of interesting yeast and told me I have to use them or risk disappointing him. And now if I don’t, I’ll feel like an even bigger jerk.

I didn’t brew for a long while for a number of reasons. Here they are in a convenient bullet format:

* A lot of my beers were not coming out right. I couldn’t get my process down and it got annoying.

* Brewing takes a lot of time. Not neccesarily on the day you brew, but you have to watch the fermentation, rack the beer, and bottle the beer. So brewing a batch of beer means you have to have time to do the other stuff every week or so.

* I have too many hobbies. This directly relates to the previous bullet. If I have a bunch of other stuff I want to do – biking, playing guitar, going to bars to drink good beer and see local bands, etc. – bottling a beer that didn’t come out that great is going to get put off.

* There are tons of good beers to drink that I didn’t have to make. I can only drink so much beer in a week and there are TONS of good craft beers available. For a while there I was thinking that if my beer has nothing new to offer me, why would I drink it instead of something like Captain Lawrence, Boak’s, Sixpoint, or a bajillion others?

So there are my reasons for stopping. Why do I want to start again? I’m not going to give another bulletted list. Sorry. My basic reason is that it was fun every once in a while. Also, a friend of mine at work brews and talking to him about it all the time got me wanting to brew again. Oh, and I still have a bunch of grains in the pantry that are still good and it would be a shame to throw them away.

I’m planning on brewing an oatmeal stout pretty soon, maybe this weekend. There will be a post about it. Hopefully, there will be more posts more often, too. But don’t hold me to that because as you may have noticed, I’m not reliable.

Cheers.

Big American Brown
3.5 Qts
1.75# Marris Otter
1.5 oz British Crystal 50 – 60L (I like the character it gives over the American 40L or 60L)
1 oz Chocolate Malt
0.75 oz Victory (I like the toastiness this gives brown ales)
0.375 oz Willamette @ 90 min
0.167 oz Willamette @ 35 min
0.125 oz Willamette @ 0 min
WLP001 Yeast

My methods were a little different this time from the last brew, but not much. First off, the grain crushing. I read on the More Beer forums that some people were using a blender to “crush” their grains. It seems easy enough, so I gave it a go.

As per the recommendations in the forums, I put one cup of grain in at a time. Three two second pulses seemed to do the trick, resulting in a “crush” that left some kernels intact and ground some to flour.

For the most part, the result isn’t much different from the Corona mill I’ve been using, and since this took a fraction of the time and was infinitely easier to clean up I think I’ll stick with the blender method for all my small batches.

The next change in method was the bag for the mash. I went to the hardware store and picked up a two-pack of 5 gallon paint straining bags for $2. It’s way better for the beer-in-a-bag mashing setup than the little grain sack I used last time. Here it is sitting in the water with the thermometer and steamer basket waiting for some grains:

In addition to the new mesh bag, I decided to change the sparging technique…by eliminating it entirely. I just heated up enough strike water to make up for the grain absorption. The water got heated to 160F and the grains were mashed in. The temperature dropped to 155F and I tried to keep it there for an hour. It involved some stirring and adding some heat to the kettle every now and then, but not as much as last time. Then I just pulled the bag out and let it drain over the kettle for a few seconds while I turned the flame on for the boil.

I didn’t really squeeze the bag, like I’ve heard some people do. I just let it drain off and threw the whole sack into the sink to cool down. This method, with the blending and mashing in the kettle, got 75% mash efficiency, which is roughly what I was getting with the 5 gallon cooler and batch sparge method on my 2.5 gallon batches a while back. So I’m pleased as punch. Let’s move on and see if I can’t screw this up somehow.

I boiled for an hour, throwing hops in at 60 and 5 minutes as my recipe was originally written. Then when it came time to cool down I noticed that there was WAY too much wort in the kettle. Back on the heat for another half hour to try to boil off more water. That’s how I ended up with a 90 minute boil with hops at 90, 35 and flame-out. After all that I ended up with too LITTLE wort – 3 quarts instead of 3.5. Not a big deal, I guess, but it would have been nice to finish up having gotten just about everything right for once.

This beer’s stats:
OG = 1.062
IBU = 61
Expected FG = 1.015

Assumptions for next time:
Evaporation rate of 2.25 qts/hr
Mash efficiency of 74%
Brewhouse efficiency of 64%
Total brewing time of 4 hours

The final product is seven bottles of what I’m going to call a blonde ale. It dropped from 1.043 to 1.010, which gives it about 4.3% ABV. The hydrometer sample was a little more bitter than I had wanted (probably due to my low original gravity), but I’ll just let it sit and mellow out for a while before I make a final judgment. And I saved the yeast cake so I can make some more beer this weekend without running out on Friday to buy and overpriced vial of White Labs from the local shop. This time I’ll throw a recipe together beforehand, though.

The real point of this post, and most of my posts really, is to say that if you think you a) can’t brew beer or b) can’t brew all-grain beer, you’re wrong. It’s easy and you can do it in your kitchen in not much time and without that much space. So get to it.

So one day I decided I’d try to make some hard cider with some of this stuff. I mean, I’ve got all this equipment for fermenting things and I love cider, so why not? They sell two kinds: regular and tart. I’ve never actually had the tart, but I’m sure it’s good. For this experiment I bought a gallon of the regular stuff. The process was simple – dump some cider in a gallon jug, chuck in some yeast, pop an airlock on it and wait. I used some ale yeast I had sitting around, probably WLP001 California Ale but I honestly can’t remember and I lost the notes for this. I don’t even remember when I did this, because I only just found the bottles of it this morning. The bottles are labelled “Cider 7% 6-20-08″ so I’m guessing I threw it in the primary in April, secondary in May and bottled in June. But that’s a wild guess.

I put one of the six bottles in the fridge for a couple of hours to try it out. When I poured it into a glass, this is what it looked like:

Glass taken from my favorite local bar. It says “Bud Light” on the other side.

Crystal clear. You could even read the paper through it!

This is how I always read the paper. Through a glass of booze.

And the taste? VERY dry, as I expected. Lots of apple in the nose, crisp carbonation and a smooth tartness in the finish. None of the ale yeast flavors I was expecting and way smoother than I thought it would be. I guess forgetting about it for 6 months helped. So if you’re into dry ciders (not the Woodchuck-style stuff, or whatever it’s called), then you should definitely give this a shot. Get some decent apple cider and add yeast. The end.

Here’s another fun story:

The reason I was in the pantry looking into the boxes of bottles was because I decided to bottle the mead I had made. That’s right – mead. See, about the same time I made the cider I guess I thought it would be fun to make mead. I’ve never had mead and have no idea if I like it, but it’s just as easy to make as the cider. I got two pounds of good orange blossom honey and some spring water (I don’t know about my tap water for unboiled fermenting applications, yet) and put it all into a gallon jug with a packet of champagne yeast. Airlock and put away.

They say the best way to make mead is to forget about it because it takes a long time to age out the harsh alcohol flavor. Well, I actually forgot about it. I found it in the back of the pantry with a notecard that said:

MEAD
15 April 2008
2# Orange Blossom Honey
Champagne Yeast
OG = 1.080

So it’s been sitting on the lees (dead yeast) for a while now, which is probably not good. But it was extremely clear. So rather than rack it into a secondary I just bottled it. The hydrometer sample read 0.990 which means it’s about 11.6% ABV, so I expected a bit of an alcohol bite, despite the long wait. I tasted the sample to see.

Now maybe I have no idea what mead is supposed to taste like. I’m thinking of a dry white wine sort of flavor. The nose was strangely good. A little honey and a little floral – very good. The actual flavor was a bit like flowery Triaminic – not very good. I bottled it anyway in the hopes that it will taste better with age, as I keep hearing on the mead forums. Unfortunately (or fortunately), due to a stupid mistake involving a loose spigot, I only got 5 bottles out of the 3.5 quarts that I had in the fermenter. One of them went right into the fridge for a chilled taste test later tonight. If I’m going to judge how it ages I might as well try one cold now, right? Right? Oh, and I decided to not carbonate them. There’s so little residual sweetness (i.e., none) that carbonation might make it seem harsh. So still it is.

One more brewing related endeavor:

I love coffee. I’m not exactly a coffee snob; I drink Dunkin Donuts coffee almost every day and will get a cup at any diner I go to, which is a lot since I live in NJ. But I do drink a lot of coffee and at home I usually brew good, fresh coffee and I almost exclusively use a french press because I think the extra work is worth the extra flavor. But I’ve been reading a bunch about cold-brewed coffee and thought it would be fun to try. Some say it sucks, some say it’s a great way to get low-acid full-flavor coffee at any strength – there’s only one way to tell. I read all sorts of different methods but settled on this one:

Ground coffee and cold tap water in a 1:4 ratio in a french press for 12 hours. Pour through a coffee filter after pressing to filter out any remaining sludge.

Easy enough. I realized afterwards that post-press filtering probably isn’t necessary, but it wasn’t difficult so I don’t feel like I wasted any energy. To make a cup of coffee, I boiled some water in a tea kettle and mixed it with some of this cold-brewed coffee concentrate (boiling water to concentrate was 4:1). A little sugar and a little cream and it was…weak. Maybe I need to use a larger ratio of coffee to tap water in the brewing process, or even in the cup. I don’t know. It seems handy to have a bottle of coffee concentrate in the fridge to make iced coffee whenever you want or to have “fresh” coffee at work that doesn’t involve joining the coffee club and drinking Foldgers. I’ll try it again, but I think I may just prefer stronger, bolder coffee than this method is capable of producing.

Those are my stories. Sorry for the lack of photos for most of it. The pictures would have been boring, anyway.

This tiny batch brewing was getting on my nerves. The tiny batches themselves are fine but my inability to hit my targets and brew a successful beer as planned is a real pisser. So I put together a new plan for mashing that simplifies the whole process (I think) and ran a test batch to see how it works.

Here’s the basic approach: I mashed in the kettle with the crushed grains tied up in a mesh bag and sitting on a metal steamer basket at he bottom of the pot (that kept the grains from scorching). Doughed in with all the pre-boil water needed. The grains absorbed some water so I poured boiling water over the grains after mashing until the water was back to the volume I needed (a tea kettle, wire mesh strainer to hold the bag of grains and a pre-marked metal ruler to gauge the wort volume worked perfectly for this). I used a candy thermometer to keep an eye on the mash temperature and hit the kettle with some flame whenever the temp dropped too low.

Easy right? No mash tun to worry about, no stuck runoffs, no juggling multiple pots of water at different temperatures for mashout and sparges and all that crap. I got this idea off one of the homebrew forums and adapted it to my stovetop brew. I think it’s something the Aussies call “brew in a bag” or something. I don’t remember and I don’t feel like looking it up right now. Point is, it was easy and it seemed to work. I used 2 pounds of 2-row for this just to see what kind of efficiency I’d get then picked out some hops based on the pre-boil gravity. Here’s a basic rundown (yes, I took notes, shut up):

2 lbs Domestic 2-row
0.5 oz Styrian Goldings (2%AA) @ 60 minutes
0.25 oz ” @ 30 minutes
0.25 oz ” @ 5 minutes
WLP001
Mash @ 155F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume = 6.75 qts
Pre-boil SG = 1.027 @ 60F
Post-boil volume = 4.5 qts
Post-boil SG = 1.043 @ 60F

As you can see, the post-boil volume is way higher than the 1.050 or so I was expecting based on the pre-boil SG. I guess I misjudged the boil-off rate. No big deal, really, because it still looks like a decent beer to me. The brewhouse efficiency is about 65%, which I’m fine with. I don’t really care what the number is as long as I can get that number each time, or close to it.

So that’s the method I’m going to use for the next batch and just try to dial in the boil-off to nail my SG. The whole thing took 4 hours from getting stuff out to putting everything away and was WAY easier than the way I’ve been doing things. I even cooled the wort down in a sink of ice water rather than use the immersion chiller. This may be the easiest way to brew all-grain I’ve ever come across. 3 liters on the stove mostly with equipment you have around the kitchen anyway. Awesome.

Conclusion: I’m brewing again and it looks like this might be a successful first beer of the season. Huzzah!

I’ve been gone for a little while, but I’m back now.  I had some business trips and then I was sick and then I had to travel again.  But now that I’m back I have some funny stories for you all (both of you reading this).  Well, not so much funny as depressing.  See I’ve had some beer related failures lately and since I’m an honest guy I’m gonna tell you all about them.

Failure the first – my 3 liter kegs.  The cap fixture I made leaked.  I tried different washers, gaskets and even some epoxy but I just couldn’t get the thing to hold pressure.  I’m working on a solution at the moment which will hopefully be shown on this here blog at some point in the not-so-distant future, but in the meantime I’ve got a bunch of beer sitting in 3 liter bottles that I can’t really access.  So I caved in and bought the Tap-a-Draft you see in that picture up there (25 buckaroos at one of my LHBSs).  Voila!  Beer!  The rye ale in the picture is quite tasty, by the way.

Failure the second – bottling.  Because I’m an idiot, I decided to secondary some beers in 3 liter bottles, but that’s not the idiotic thing.   The idiotic thing is that I capped the bottles instead of plugging them with air locks, because I figured they were done fermenting and any degassing wasn’t going to cause any trouble in a plastic soda bottle.  Boy was that dumb.  The beer built up some carbonation and when I transferred them to new bottles and added some sugar…KAPOW!  Foam out the wazoo.  I only had to lose one batch of beer to realize my mistake, thankfully.  The pale ale was lost to the foam demons, but there’s still a bottle of brown ale and a bottle of dry stout left.  I can’t carbonate these now because they have CO2 in solution and the addition of sugar will blow them up so I think I’ll just have to force carb these with the Tap-a-Draft.  No big deal.

Other things:

I bottled up the IPAs I had in primary, skipping the secondary altogether.  They’ve been sitting around for about 4 weeks now so they went right into some 3 liter bottles with about 3/4 ounces of sugar each.  One of them had a really low OG (1.050) and hit 1.012 with some Sixpoint yeast (76% attenuation and ~5% ABV).  The other  started at 1.058 (still low) and got some Pacman yeast that I had cultured from a bottle of Shakespeare Stout.  That one hit 1.008…86% attenuation and 6.5% ABV!  That Pacman yeast is a killer.  And it tasted pretty damn good out of the primary.  The only thing I didn’t like was that it didn’t flocculate nearly as well as the Sixpoint yeast or the White Labs 001 that I normally use.  Oh well.

Still haven’t figured out my low efficiency problems, but now that I have some empty fermenters I can get cracking on that.

Below is a basic overview of their current beers. Keep in mind that I didn’t take notes or anything while I was there because I didn’t want to look like a tool. Also, I was – and continue to be – suffering from a pretty bad cold so my senses of taste and smell were (are) dulled. But the place was cool so I think it deserves a review anyway.

So for 7 bucks you can get a sampler which contains a 4 ounce glass of every beer they have on tap. Not just five or six of their pre-selected favorites – but ALL ELEVEN BEERS! That is fucking brilliant. They get an A+ for that alone. But how was the beer, you ask? Here’s a brief rundown of my recollections:

Light Lager – I didn’t expect much from this, which is probably why I was so surprised. It was crisp and refreshing with very little aroma to speak of. But it had a terrific yet mild malt flavor and slightly sharp finish. This is the beer they brew for the “American Lager” crowd and I was really impressed with it.

Raspberry Wheat – The server suggested we drink this one last because the post-fermentation addition of raspberry concentrate tends to stick to the palette. I didn’t do as I was told and was grateful – my night would have ended with this beer and that would be bad. This beer was way too sweet for me. It tasted like someone mixed juice into the beer after pouring it. I’ll be up front with you and say that I don’t really like the whole fruit-wheat genre of beers, and this beer is a primary example of why. When someone gives me a fruit flavored wheat beer that doesn’t taste syrupy I’ll change my tune.

Vienna Red Lager – This was actually a little disappointing for me – I wanted it to be a little more complex than it was, I guess. There was a nice bready malt flavor and a sharp Saaz zing to it, which was really good. I can’t really put my finger on it, but this seemed a little one-dimensional. Maybe it’s the cold talking.

Ironbound Ale – Here’s their American pale ale, can you guess the hops? Four varieties, they say, and I definitely taste the Cascade and Chinook in it. The moderate caramel malt flavors were almost, but not quite, hidden by the assertive, citrusy hops. The server said this is their best-selling beer and I can see why, it’s like a light IPA that you can drink all night. This was also J.’s favorite beer of the group.

Pigiron Porter – A delicious example of the style – chocolatey and roasted with a very subtle hint of raisin in the background. The finish was rich and bitter with a hint of espresso. As J. noticed, though, the carbonation seemed a little high which muted the subtler flavors of the beer.

Nitro Pigiron Porter – Same beer as above poured on nitro. This solved any problems the beer may have had. The chocolate flavors came out stronger with some coffee and raisin mixed in. It was fantastic and creamy as all get out with a long espresso finish. Probably my favorite of the group.

Belgian Abbey Dubbel – In the interest of full disclosure I’ll come out and tell you that I’m not a big fan of this style, either. (Beer snobs across the blogosphere are cringing). I respect, appreciate and even admire a good Belgian ale I just don’t particularly like them. Maybe they’re too sweet for me – or maybe just too Belgian. Michelle loves the Belgian beers and I’m trying to find ones that I really dig, I just haven’t found too many yet. So my review of this beer would be unfair. I’m sure it was good, I just didn’t care for it much.

American Brown Ale – This is one of my favorite styles, probably because of the way it pairs with good barbecue. This particular one may be the most American of all American browns I’ve ever had. It had a deep mahogany color and rich chocolate flavor topped off with an assload of Cascade, Centennial and Chinook. It tasted like someone threw the hop additions for an American pale ale into the kettle of the brown ale. And I liked it so much I got a growler of it to go – which is how I learned that this gets old a little fast. I love the idea of it, but in practice I’d like the brown ale to be a little smoother than the c-hops make it. Still a great beer, just stop at one.

Saison (seasonal) – Here, oddly enough, is a Belgian beer that I like. Even with a cold I could tell this had a great aroma. The flavors were full and fruity without being overbearing (to my anti-Belgian tastes). And the finish was perfectly crisp and refreshing. It seemed strange to have this as the seasonal beer in February, but I could be wrong on that. Either way, it was really frickin’ good.

Belgian Abbey Trippel (seasonal) – I gave my sample to J. since I was driving and don’t care much for the style, anyway. He had no problem accepting the offer.

Russian Imperial Stout (seasonal) – Another style that I just love. I drank this one last in lieu of dessert and I think it was the right choice. It was rich and roasted, full of espresso and toffee flavors, a punched up with citrusy American hops (it worked in this one). What a great sipping beer. (Or chugging beer – but at almost 10%, watch out.) I should have gotten a Reserve Bottle of this stuff instead of the growler of brown – my mistake.

There they are – all eleven of their current beers. I think there’s actually a chocolate stout going on tap tonight, but I’m back in Jersey now so I can’t check that out. Overall, I think the beers were good with the highlights being the Ironbound Ale, Nitro Pigiron Porter and the Russian Imperial Stout. The food was pretty good, too, and the space was really comfortable. They’ve got cool shit like the Mug Club and Bottle Reserves and they sell growlers for $15 ($11 for a refill). I recommend it if you ever find yourself near one of these – check their website for locations and more info.

You are a blinding brilliant light from heaven.

Now I may be biased, but that has got to be, without hyperbole, the coolest damn thing mankind has ever and will ever know.

Alright, I’m a little biased. But do you even see what that is? That’s a 3 liter soda bottle turned into a KEG! I’m just a tad bit excited about this, as you can see. Now I know this isn’t the most original thing in the world – a google search or a browse through some of the more popular homebrew forums will show you that this has been done before. Now you’re saying,”Well, so what? You did something that a bunch of other brewers already did? What’s the big deal?” To be honest, it probably isn’t a big deal, but I’ll explain what I did anyway and you can decide if it’s cool or not.

Parts:

3/8″ brass female tee
3/8″ brass close nipple
3/8″ brass couple
3/8″ threaded liquid-tight strain relief
3/8″ threaded quick-disconnect socket
1/4″ barbed quick-disconnect socket
2 x 1/4″ barbed quick-disconnect plugs
1/4″ barbed schrader valve
5/32″ vinyl tubing
1/4″ vinyl tubing
picnic tap
CO2 tire inflater
hose washers
steel shims
teflon tape
3L soda bottle

I am born anew in your genius.

Assembly:

This should be pretty obvious from the pictures, but I’ll run through it anyway. Wrap teflon tape around all the threaded fittings. Run the 5/32″ tubing through the tee (as shown) and slip the liquid-tight fitting over the “out” end and tighten it up (not too tight, you need the beer to flow smoothly). On the other side of the tee screw on the threaded quick-disconnect and on the bottom of the tee (where the tubing is coming out) screw in the nipple. Now drill a hole in the top of a 3L soda cap 5/8″ in diameter and screw that onto the nipple – it should sit tightly against the bottom of the tee. Put a hose washer and some shims in the cap and screw the coupler onto the nipple tightly (I used a wrench for this, everything else I just hand tightened). Heat up some 1/4″ tubing and push it over the “out” end of the 5/32″ tubing – this is a tight fit and may take some work, but it’ll go. Put the 1/4″ barbed female QD on the other end of the 1/4″ tubing and the main body is done.

Nor indeed was the world, nor history, nor anything that the human eye has ever captured.

The parts that I added that I didn’t see on anyone else’s version of this “keg” are the quick disconnect fittings. I thought it would be neat if this could be treated just like your average keg. So take some 1/4″ tubing and stick a QD plug on one end and the picnic tap on the other and on another piece of tubing stick the other QD plug and the schrader valve. Now you can pump some CO2 in and dispense.

Unbelievable. You are a modern master.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourself,”A schrader valve and tire inflater? That’s not ‘just like your average keg’ at all!” And it’s not, but with the QD fittings I can get a CO2 tank and regulator and hook that up to this and then it would be just like your average keg – except very small. Small enough, in fact, to fit in the door of your average refrigerator if you got a paintball CO2 canister, which is my plan. I needed to verify that this thing would work before getting the regulator, though.

It is like looking into the face of god and seeing him smiling back saying, “You are my most wondrous creation”.

As you can see, this does work. Not the best pour in the world but I’m just getting used to it. For now I’ll be priming the 3L bottles and using CO2 to push them but hopefully I’ll be able to force carb soon and can set the carbonation a little more precisely. Now you may be thinking to yourself,”This is cool and all, but how is it any better than / different from a Tap-A-Draft?” The answer: it really isn’t much different except for the ability to use a tank and regulator and that you get to put it together yourself.

Keep in mind, if you plan on doing this, that beer should not be stored in these bottles for very long. They are both light and oxygen permeable, so if you want to age your beer for more than, say, six months you should bottle them in brown glass or actual steel kegs. For beers that are going to be had young or for taking to picnics or parties, this could be a cool gadget to have around.

If anyone wants part numbers from McMaster-Carr, which is where I got almost all the pieces, shoot me an email or leave a comment and I’ll hook you up.

Scrumtrillescent!