king keg?

wuben

heya lads and ladies has anyone tryed these king kegs or heard anything about them?at the mo im extract brewing into bottles and am very happy with my results was thinking of lookin into the king keg you carbonate the beer with co2 cartridges.just looking to see has anyone done this yet and is it effective and more importandly is the beer nicer when left in the keg like this one?was thinking when the beer is finished fermenting in the large fermenter i could transfer it to to keg to condition......only if its worth it thou and the results would be better so any info advice be great thanks

guildofevil

There are advantages and disadvantages to these kegs.

First of all, it is a lot easier to transfer your entire batch to a keg than bottle it.

You should note that you do not actually use the co2 cartridges to carbonate the beer. The batch is primed with sugar, just like bottle conditioning and naturally carbonates in the keg.

The purpose of the co2 cartridges is to top up the co2 after you have drawn off beer. As you serve beer, the volume of liquid drops, which lowers the pressure inside the keg. After a good few pints have been drawn off, the pressure will drop to the point where beer stops coming out of the tap. This is when you fire in a co2 cartridge to bring the pressure back up.

A disadvantage of these kegs is the difficulty of chilling them. They are kind of bulky and one would fill an under counter fridge by itself. I used to keep my plastic beer barrels out the back yard, which was a good solution in the winter, but kind of crap in the summer.

I find that English ales and stouts work well in these kegs, but anything that needs a decent bit of carbonation, like Weissbier or Belgian Ale does not fare well.

wuben

cheers apreciate your feed back!