Irish Red, but creamier?

[Tal Orbach]

Natural carbonation in the keg would be the same as in the fermenter. I do burst carbing and it eventually settles into a nice fine-bubble creamy-head sort of carbonation but at first it's a little bit soda-fizzy. I haven't done the set and forget method but that should yield results similar to natural carbonation without the residue that keg-priming would make. Both would take more time than the capped fermenter method but not more than an extra week or so.

The thing is - I believe it's also far more costly, isn't it?
How much CO2 is needed for, say, 2.2 volumes for 5 gallons? How much of it goes to waste (instead of going in your beer?)

 

[J A]

Technically, yes you use free CO2 to produce the carbonation in suspension if you cap the fermenter or keg prime. The actual amount that it takes to carb the beer is the only part that you'd save money on. While it's not nothing, the amount of CO2 that's used to push the beer out of the keg is far larger compared to what actually goes in suspension. In the case of keg priming you'd only be using CO2 to serve but in the case of my fermenter, I'm using CO2 to help push the beer into the keg during pressure transfer, as well. I'm almost certainly not realizing any great savings by capping but I know for certain that I've spent more due to leaky connections than anything else. The first time you empty a new bottle overnight because the gasket seal slipped out while you were replacing the regulator, you wiped out any savings realized.
I read an article about a new green technology that some of the breweries are using to reclaim and reuse all the CO2 from the fermentation process rather than just capping for carbonation. With capping we're only capturing a fraction of the total CO2 production and the amount that we release during the full carbonation. If we could capture and use it all, we'd fill a 5 lb bottle every time we did a 10 gallon batch. When small breweries are spending tens of thousands a year on CO2, it could make real savings. For us it's not as significant.

 

[Nosybear]

We call that engineering pragmatism.

 

[Tal Orbach]

T While it's not nothing, the amount of CO2 that's used to push the beer out of the keg is far larger compared to what actually goes in suspension.

According to the article below, carbing with CO2 uses more gas than serving (that, of course, neglects any losses due to leaks, or any other efficiency losses).
Do you disagree? Why?

http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2014/09/kegging-co2-use-estimations-and-calculations.html


BTW, the article also says that achieving total purging of a keg is very inefficient, due to mixing with air in the keg, which makes total sense, but I think I figured out how to do it - just fill the keg with water, all the way to the top, then empty it by using CO2 to push out the water. No air will get into the keg at any point - voila, perfectly purged keg, no purging losses. Am I wrong here?

 

[J A]

According to the article below, carbing with CO2 uses more gas than serving (that, of course, neglects any losses due to leaks, or any other efficiency losses).
Do you disagree? Why?

http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2014/09/kegging-co2-use-estimations-and-calculations.html


BTW, the article also says that achieving total purging of a keg is very inefficient, due to mixing with air in the keg, which makes total sense, but I think I figured out how to do it - just fill the keg with water, all the way to the top, then empty it by using CO2 to push out the water. No air will get into the keg at any point - voila, perfectly purged keg, no purging losses. Am I wrong here?

I guess if there are specific calculations to the contrary (though there are a number of variables missing in the methodology described in the article...headspace, temperature, etc, etc) I'd have to go with that, but my understanding has been that a keg full of beer that's holding 6 lbs of pressure, for instance will hold less CO2 than a keg that's holding only CO2 at the same pressure. Some folks serve at a much higher pressure, as much as 10 or 12 lbs, eventually filling the entire volume of the keg with CO2 at that pressure. I'll read the article and do a little more research to increase my understanding of it.

As for purging, what I've been doing and what's a pretty common practice is to fill the keg completely with Star-San or other sanitizer and push that into a waiting keg under pressure, that one into another and so on until that every keg is sanitized and purged of O2 and filled with CO2 under pressure.

What that means for my half barrel system is that, even though I've carbed the beer using natural "free" CO2, I've used gas to fill the entire volume of the fermenter under pressure to push the beer into kegs and each of those kegs has been filled with CO2 under pressure at least twice, once for purging/sanitizing and once for pushing out the beer during serving. And that might increase if I rush the beer into kegs and need to push it from the "brite" keg into a serving keg after it clears.

When it comes down to it, CO2 cost at a homebrew scale is a relatively small percentage of the overall expense and the real benefit of natural carbonation is in the characteristics of the beer.

 

[Tal Orbach]

Let me know how your batch turned out and what variations you used. When I re-brewed, I pushed a little darker and a little higher OG. It's really good but I want to do it again and hold closer to the original batch recipe.

So, I forgot to answer.
It turned out great. I really like this beer. I will say, though, that it's totally not red. It's very dark - near black, actually. Not that it actually bothers me. Just a side note.

 

[J A]

It's very dark - near black, actually. Not that it actually bothers me. Just a side note.

Curious about your recipe. It must have been pretty different from my original Golden Toffee version if it turned out quite dark.

I will say, though, that it's totally not red.

Red color in beer is tough to get. Munich at 10L or 15L is good for that rich copper color and hitting it with a little dark Munich can get it to a nice place. CaraRed is about 24L and is a nice Crystal malt to use to enhance the color. Once you get darker than about 40L, the richer brown tones start to show up and using Midnight Wheat or BlackPrinz in quantities more than 1% can really throw some color in there.

 

[Tal Orbach]

Curious about your recipe. It must have been pretty different from my original Golden Toffee version if it turned out quite dark.

I actually don't think it was all that different, but your recipe did have a lot of very specific malts, which are not very easy to get in Israel, so my LHBS guy did the best he could to get as close as possible to those.

 

[J A]

I actually don't think it was all that different, but your recipe did have a lot of very specific malts, which are not very easy to get in Israel, so my LHBS guy did the best he could to get as close as possible to those.

Mostly about the "L" numbers, I suppose.

 

[Tal Orbach]

Probably...

 

[GFHomebrew]

"L"ovibond?

 

[J A]

"L"ovibond?

Yep...When subbing malts I try to look closely at the similarities in characteristics. For a beer where color is important the Lovibond number is pretty key. For instance, "Brown Malt" from William Crisp shows to be 60-70 L but "Brown Malt" from Simpsons lists 161 to 225 L. That's a huge difference when choosing something for an amber/mahogany.copper color.
Beyond that, whether it's converted then kilned (cara/crystal) or roasted from "green" malt will make quite a difference in flavor.