Beer tap handle parts

I have always wanted a pub at home but as i have got older i have rethought this idea given the added weight the barley hops has me carrying. If i had a pub it would be even worse and if i had a keg on tap oh boy i might never get any work done. :)
 
Yep, I was gonna say brew your own. You'll treat that sweet nectar in a keg like it was a precious commodity not just for general swilling...

I'm growing hops this year and hopefully will do some brewing come fall...
 
Brent when i first came to Canada i had a go at Brewing my own except we had to do the whole thing at a store. They have small copper kettles and all the variety of hops and malts ie raw ingredients to allow you to make your own recipe. Problem for me was one batch was 6 cases of 24 bottles or 50 litres. You need to finish that in 3 months. That was way too much for me. I tried to get a few peopl i know in on it to share the brews but it was difficult to manage. Its way way cheaper than buying it here given the cost of our gov regulated beer price.

Example 6 cases of own brew (you bottle yourself with your own bottles) = $108 approx. thats $18 per case.

6 Cases of the cheapest beer at our beer store will set you back $29 per case on a bargain beer = $174

But it had real ingredients and fattening ones at that. Not like that "Budwiser" water you guys get in the USA:rofl::rofl::scram:
 
Holy Moly you guys have it rough.

Several years ago I was really into brewing from full grain. From grinding the grains on up. Lots of fun, but boy it's an all day process. So I would do 10 gallon batches and put it into 5 gallon kegs. Skipping the bottling made it go a bit faster and it always seemed to taste better on tap...

Hoping I get some hops this year and I swear I will break out all the old equipment and give it a go.
 
...Not like that "Budwiser" water you guys get in the USA:rofl::rofl::scram:

Once I was sitting in a bar in Montreal next to a local guy who was drinking a Budweiser. As we were chatting, I motioned toward my bottle of Labatt Blue and pointed out him that we were both drinking "imports". ;)
 
Several years ago I was really into brewing from full grain. From grinding the grains on up. Lots of fun, but boy it's an all day process. So I would do 10 gallon batches and put it into 5 gallon kegs. Skipping the bottling made it go a bit faster and it always seemed to taste better on tap...

Hoping I get some hops this year and I swear I will break out all the old equipment and give it a go.

Heh, yep it is better on tap and once you have the equipment all grain is the way to go. Don't get to excited if its your hops first year, but next year they'll be gangbusters. Feed them lots of horse poop in the spring and keep them moist. Oh and if you thin the bines to 2-3 per hill you'll actually get more hops. Don't waste the cutoffs, if you get them young and tender they steam up fine and taste better than asparagus (a little bitter but less so than a lot of greens).

I usually do 5 gallon batches (my system can do 10 but variety is nice, 10g is a LOT of beer) but the setup/teardown time kills me so I usually do 2 or 3 batches in a day. I've pipelined the process so that an extra batch adds about an hour, whereas a single batch is about 4. Usually I brew a half dozen or so in the spring and another half dozen or so in the fall. The batches I like I keep, the rest I can take into work (there is a kegerator for friday afternoons after work and those guys will drink anything :rolleyes:). I usually only have maybe 1 or 2 a day (maybe 3 if I'm sitting around all sunday afternoon or none if I have something going on) but I take a lot of pleasure in the making and seeing what comes out (honestly I think I like the making more than the drinking, I mean you do have to taste it to see what it did, but I could make 100x what I could ever want to drink). In a way its like woodworking but there is more alchemy - I suppose if you really got into formulating your own finishes it might be similar.

Seems that a lot of the good beer around here has gotten powerfully strong, kind of hard to enjoy that one beer and you're all tipsy so I've been working on the opposite trend. Have a couple of 3.2% recipes pretty dialed in that taste really good (you can actually tweak mouth feel and flavor somewhat independently of alcohol % up to certain limits). There are also some low gravity styles that are really good. Sometimes its fun to make a strong beer but they're pretty hard to finish up as Rob noted.

A really good idea since you already have a kegerator is to fill a keg with water and keep it at about 25PSI. Instant soda water, I use a lot more of that than I do the beer :D We make a lot of our own flavors (ideas below) but if you're lazy the pre-flavored italian soda syrups are still about 10c/glass or better (imho) is a spritz of fruit juice topped with the soda water. I don't pre-flavor it like some do because... well variety :D

Things I've learned about soda:
- almost any of the scratch root beer recipes I've tried are good, but a 1/4 to 1/2 C of raisins really improves the mouth feel
- Lemon Lime, shave ~6 lemons and ~6 limes (just the colored part, no pith) and steep peelings in 1qt simple syrup (1 part sugar/1part water). Strain and squeeze the juice in on top. Add a splash of this and then top with the soda water and it'll be the best lemon lime you've ever had.
- ginger ale is hard. Never can get enough ginger.

While we're here, a link to my kegerator build that I did a few years back http://getaclue.org/~ryan/beer-freezer/. I've since added tap handles, etc.. and upgraded the pressure regulator with more independent knobs. Not really in love with the cherry stain but hey it sort of looks like furniture which got it into the house :D Those of you who do drywall may recognize the drip tray.

Back on the original thread, I'm working on a set of ~50+ tap handles for a brewer friend of mine that are made with local natural edge cherry (did a sample set of 8 ~2 weeks ago that he liked, we're gathering up the wood for the rest), I'll try to get around to taking pictures when we get to it.... I used inserts, but I kind of like the look of the chrome ferrules, we'll see what the customer thinks the natural cherry all the way to the bottom looked kind of cool.
 
Ryan, nice job on the kegerator build, wouldn't have thought to use a freezer, but makes sense for the type of kegs you're using. The extension for the taps is a great idea too.

I'll have to try some raisins the next time I make root beer too. :thumb:
 
Very slick Ryan. I've wanted one of those chest freezers for a while, but to use as a fermentation chamber. I did make up a fermentation chamber that uses blocks of ice, a thermostat, and a ventilation fan to control temps.
 
Ryan, nice job on the kegerator build, wouldn't have thought to use a freezer, but makes sense for the type of kegs you're using. The extension for the taps is a great idea too.

I'll have to try some raisins the next time I make root beer too. :thumb:

Yeah its ok for 5g kegs just don't try to lift a commercial 15g 1/2bbl keg into there unless you're samson or the hulk :eek: I have used it to lager carboys in as well and with a carrier its not tooo bad to lift in and out, but if you have back problems I'd recommend against it (I suppose the new better bottle plastic ones wouldn't be so bad, mine are all glass and that adds another ?15? 20? lbs).

Most of the commercial root beer extracts seem to have some texture enhancement added, but I haven't used those in years so it could be my memory playing tricks :D
 
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