OVHA Chat

The 2016 Barrel Brew Imperial Stout will be drained, kegged & sampled on Sat, March 25th at Evansville Brewhouse starting at 10am. If you brewed the 2016 beer make sure to bring a clean & sanitized keg. If you will not have one ready make arrangements to borrow one. I will bring a couple extras just in case. We will then transfer and sample the 2017 Quad into the barrel.

We will need a pin lock quick disconnect. Anyone have that?

There used to be some in our tool box that we kept at Turoni's

Are we going to do a closed loop transfer using Co2? Not sure if Jeff, or anyone has a set up for this, but I was reading an article in BYO last night that had instructions to make one. I can't find that particular article online, but here is the basic idea (link below)-

"When you are ready to drain the barrel, one option is a pump. But our group and some brewpubs have had great success using CO2 pressure. Simply get a drilled number 10.5 rubber bung and drill a second hole in it. Insert a long racking cane into one hole and a short length of plastic or stainless steel tubing into the other. Through the short tube, pump CO2 at 5 to 10 pounds per square inch (PSI) into the barrel. At this pressure, a firmly pressed bung stays in place just fine.

Beer traveling through the racking cane goes by plastic tubing into a Cornelius keg. You don’t even need to open the kegs. Just pop up the relief valve and use a connector on the keg’s out-post to let beer travel directly into a keg protected by CO2. A bathroom scale can tell you when it’s time to fill the next keg.

With any luck, you are filling your kegs with a distinctive and fantastic example of beer. Toast each other, salute your patience and celebrate a successful project. Barrel emptying day should be a festive event."

http://byo.com/grains/item/68-a-barrel-of-fun

I plan to make one of these for myself. If I do it before then, I will bring it along.

Sounds like a good and simple idea! I have a long stainless racking cane I can bring if we need.

Are we going to follow any of the techniques in the "Reusing a Barrel" section or are we just going to refill the barrel right after we keg?

this sounds pretty simple

"Our group has had success in timing our brews so that we refill the barrel the same day we empty it. In between, we add about 15 gallons (57 L) of boiled water that is still very hot, slosh it around and dump it. It takes some muscle to manipulate a barrel that is 100 lbs. (45 kg) when empty, and be very careful around scalding water."

Here's my 2¢...if the barrel has been filled with an approx. 10% ABV beer for almost a year, and that beer isn't sour, isn't that testimony that the barrel is safe?

I would have to agree.. If its not sour and the new beer goes in immediately I would assume things would be all good. I think John M would be a good person to hit up. He has filled and drained his fair share of barrels.

Jam095 wrote:Here's my 2¢...if the barrel has been filled with an approx. 10% ABV beer for almost a year, and that beer isn't sour, isn't that testimony that the barrel is safe?

I also agree. Since it is same day, I don't think we're really at risk. Adding more variables like adding 'not boiling but still very hot' water will increase the chances of something going wrong. Plus, by filling, sloshing and dumping -- we'd lose the character of the barrel that we've waited a year to achieve. We did adjust the Quad recipe knowing that there would be residual stout in the barrel/wood.

I think emptying and refilling with as few steps as possible is our best course of action. If we are using a closed loop transfer method from the barrel, the inside of the barrel won't be exposed to the elements until we start refilling it.

I think we should still consult John Mills to get his thoughts and to ensure we're on the right track.

I guess there could be some concern about that trub yeast autolysing and getting funky. It's hard to tell how much sludge is in there.

Chris Norrick wrote:I guess there could be some concern about that trub yeast autolysing and getting funky. It's hard to tell how much sludge is in there.

That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I think we'll need to defer to our barrel expert.

If we rinse it with 180 deg water from Jeff's HLT I don't think we would need to worry about introducing any bacteria

Yeah...I have not read anything or done this before, but gut feel says a quick simple rinse with warm clean water (130 - 180F) would be good to get most of the sludge out of there. Maybe keep the bung in place, remove the racking cane, push in the warm/hot water with CO2 pressure from a keg, then put cane back in to extract water?

ThreeBeers wrote:Yeah...I have not read anything or done this before, but gut feel says a quick simple rinse with warm clean water (130 - 180F) would be good to get most of the sludge out of there. Maybe keep the bung in place, remove the racking cane, push in the warm/hot water with CO2 pressure from a keg, then put cane back in to extract water?

Good with me. I'd think we would want to dump it though. There are probably bits of charred oak in there that may clog the racking cane.

Makes sense to me, I hadn't thought of that either. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0slTBGBEf0g