Kegging Your Homebrew with the Cornelius Keg
Homebrewing is a constant drive to make your beer better and better. One key point is consistency, making it great time after time. The Cornelius Keg is a kegging system that has been used in pubs for a long time for fizzy drinks, pubs are now moving away from this system and there is now a great opportunity for homebrewers to get there hands on a superior quality barrel at pretty much the same price as the poorer quality plastic items we are used to. A Cornelius Keg is available via ebay including disconnects for the £30-40 mark making it as cheap or cheaper than a plastic one.
Personally, I'm totally sold, the keg can take up to 100 psi so you can force carbonate your beer if you want to for lager or cider for example, it draws liquid from the bottom so once it pulls a clear pint it can be moved, you will be everyones friend at parties when you turn up with a keg of the finiest beer they've ever tasted.
The killer app for me though is unlike every plastic barrel I've ever had, it doesn't leak co2 so once primed you're sorted, with the plastic barrels I'm constantly topping it up which ends up costing a fortune in gas.
The simplest set up is to get the keg and a pub beer tap / pump from ebay, you will probably also need a couple a john guest fitting 3/8" to 5/16" to connect the blue beer pipe to the 8mm output from a beer pump, finally you need a widget world CO2 cylinder (~£16) and a sodash gas injector (~£22) which are all available from homebrew shops. If you want it at a controlled temperature, you can get either an old fridge to create a "kegerator" or get a second hand beer cooler from ebay, as you can see I've opted for the kegerator option.
How to use a Cornelius Keg
Add your comments
what is that
in your top picture, next to the keg, it looks like a pump, but i dont know the name, or make, if you could tell me it would be a great help, thank you =]
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it is a widget world CO2 cylinder and a sodash gas injector which your local homebre shop should be able to source for you
cornelius keg made my stout fizzy
Tried this with stout and it tasted great to start with but after a few days it became to fizzy and the head wasn't as good
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Response
Hi, for that perfect stout head you want to dispense at a higher pressure which is what I think you've done. However at the higher pressure eventually you end up force carbonating the beer. Two things will help, first get a mixed carbon dioxide / nitrogen cylinder, the nitrogen bubbles are smaller and won't stay in suspension (ie won't cause carbonation) so you get the head without the fizz. Also if you add some heading powder / heading solution it creates an emulsion so the creamy head forms more easiliy at lower pressures and as a bonus it should remain throughout the pint