Kegging the moon

The La Lune Bleu is now kegged and carbed - an old recipe combined with my first attempt at kegging makes for an interesting experience.

The kegging was great - essentially consisting of the first step of bottling - you transfer into a clean container.  And then you're done - no mixing sugar, no transferring to bottles, not capping.  Just a few seconds blast of CO₂ to purge the O₂ and away you go.  Not being a patient man, I took a bit of a carbing shortcut - I pressurized to 30PSI, unhooked the gas line, and shook the beer.  This got it ~50% of the way carb'd.  I then hooked up the lines, re-pressurized to serving pressure (14PSI) and let sit until carb'd - about 3 days.  Beer was properly carb'd when tested on day 4.

There is one minor problem, that being the first few seconds of a pour are all foam.  A bit of investigating has revealed that this is due to warming of the beer in the tower portion of my kegorator.  To fix this, I'll be sheathing the beer-line in copper tubing, which'll act as a heat-sink to the main body of the kegorator.  A minor problem, but one which is irritating none-the-less.

As for the beer, its good.  This is the sixth or seventh time I've brewed this beast, and as in the past its a good beer.  The only difference is the brew has a bit of  a yeasty odour/flavour.  I did swap out my normal Wyeast American Ale for Safale US-05, but I doubt that is the issue - far more likely, I kegged to soon.  It should fade with ageing - that is, if I don't drink all the beer first.

Since this beer is kegged, the label is for a tap handle (see image to left).  But since some will need to go into bottles, I've designed bottle labels as well (image below).