Two New Videos!

Months after filming I've finally completed two videos in a three-part series on collecting & purifying wild yeast. These videos are part of my "Hunting Wild Yeast" series of blog posts, and go hand-in-hand with those posts.

The first video gives a quick overview of two ways to collect wild yeasts - namely, grabbing them off of fruits/veggies/plants/etc and collecting them from the air.

The second video shows a simple method for purifying individual strains of yeast and bacteria, in order to get pure strains for later use.

Both videos are based off of this years wild yeast hunt, whose methodology and results are summarized over two blog posts.

Video 1: Capturing Wild Yeast


Video 2: Purifying Wild Yeast

Upgrading a Costco Kegorator

I'm not sure how far Costco has penetrated into the regions of the world where I have blog readers, but my Canadian and US audience at least can appreciate the wonder and the horror that is Costco. Big warehouse store, which sometimes carries the odd gem. I know many brewers bought the Danby Kegorator that Costco carries one or so a year. I bought mine in the summer of 2012, and two years later have made a number of upgrades that I think greatly improve this fridge. These could be applied to any kegorator or keezer, so I hope you find them useful. Click for larger images

This is an obvious one - the kegorator fits two corney kegs (pin locks and ball locks fit). So a two-tap tower is a fairly obvious upgrade. Not shown here is making sure you beverage lines are 3-4 m (10-12') long will help provide smooth pours.

I always struggled with my long beverage lines getting in the way. Coiling them with pull-ties helped a little, but it turns out the real secret to getting your lines out of the way is a couple of feet of 3-conductor wire left over from a reno (yellow, more obvious in then full-sized image). First, wrap a bit of the wire around the coiled beverage lines, and then make a small "hook" at the end of the wire - this will let you hang the lines against the cold-plate, hooking into any of the multiple convenient cut-outs in the cold plate.

A gas manifold greatly aids in controlling CO₂ flow to your kegs.
But wait...why a 3-way manifold?

Adding a 3^rd line to the manifold, along with a MFL connection, allows for a "special uses" line. In my case I have three ends - a ball-lock gas-in for use with a carbonation cap or if a friend brings over a ball-lock keg, a pin-lock gas-in for purging the headspace of a filled keg or temporarily hooking up a 3rd keg, and a liquid-out pin-lock for purging kegs prior to filling and for use during carbonation (to bubble the CO₂ through the beer)

Of course, no kegorator would be complete with some custom tap handles.

Labelling a Special Brew

Bottling is a labour-intensive activity; made more so if you throw labels onto the damned things. Kegging has allowed me to avoid much of this pain, with "labelling" being nothing more than making a single hockey-card sized label to load into my tap handles.

These days my bottling activities are limited to making a few bottle to give away to friends or to take to my brewclubs meetings.  The only real exception to this is when I brew a long-ageing beer that I wish to cellar for months-to-years. I recently bottled my Gnarly Roots Barley Wine. Seeing as this beer is intended to be aged & enjoyed over years I went whole-hog on the labels - "ageing" the paper, generating a front label as well as four slightly different back labels, and even waxing the caps. While the picture below is not perfect, it gives you an idea of how they turned out.

One friend who I showed these to asked how I aged the paper & waxed the caps. I agreed to do a brief post on this, so here it is - methods below the fold...

10 Dollar, 10 minute Tap Handels

Over the weekend I built a pair of tap handles, based on a derivative of Revvy's design.  His design is quite innovative - a handle &  frame supports a magnetically-attached collector card card protector.  The label is inserted into the protector, thus labelling the brew.  My design (picture to right) is based on Revvy's, but is a little more svelte in design, easier to build, can be made for less than $10 each, and takes about 10 minutes to make (not including drying time).

The design is simple - the centre pin of a pre-turned replacement chair leg is removed and replaced with a threaded insert which allows it to be screwed onto a keg post.  A bit of the handle is cut away to allow a steel mending plate to be attached vertically to the tap - this holds the card protector/label in place via a strip of magnetic tape attached to the back of the card protector.

This has a number of advantages - aside from letting a label do double duty as both a bottle label & keg label, the labels from old batches of beer can be stuck to the keggorator/keezer - ala fridge magnets - allowing them to be reused and providing a bit of visual appeal to the fridge (and working as a reminder of the many magnificent brews that have passed through your kegs).

Very few tools are needed for this project - a saw that can do fine cuts (I used a table jigsaw, but a jewellers saw or razer saw would work equally well), a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a hand drill, and a paint brush!

Details of the build can be found below the fold.

Two Problems With Kegging

My recent foray into kegging has revealed two serious problems.  The first of these has to do with my kegorator setup.

The problem, as you can see to the right, is whenever I pour I get a head of foam.  At first I suspected the usual suspects - bad poor technique or beer lines which were too short.  But a closer look revealed something different:

At the beginning of the pour (top), pure foam comes out of the tap.  But after a few seconds, a proper pour ensures (below).  After the first glass, I can pour successive glasses that are perfect pours.


A bit of searching identified my problem - the beer lines in the tower were not being cooled, so the first bit of beer to pass through warmed, releasing its CO₂, causing the foaming.  The flowing beer then cooled the line, resolving the issue.

Problem 1: Beer lines in tower are warm.
Solution: Create a heat-sink.

More below the  fold...

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).

Bottling the Parallax

Saturday was Bottling day.  The new labels look good on the bottle (see left image).

A few more pictures can be found below the fold