My Very First Keg

My First Mini Keg

So a few weeks ago I bought my first Mini Keg from Mini Kegs Australia. Cost me AUS$29.00 delivered to the door (on special!) and is a 5 litre stainless steel keg as pictured.

Third glass, getting better

So I kegged some Coopers DIY Real Ale, my favourite home brew fermented with Coopers Brew Enhancer 2, mix of Dextrose, Maltodextrin and Light Malt. It produces a quite a well flavoured drinkable beer in only a few weeks of secondary fermentation and after about four weeks is really quite good. I have not aged it much beyond 10 weeks, but it just gets better for a really cheap DIY beer, costs me around $20.00 for Malt, Sugar, and bottle caps for 30 PET bottles.

As far as the kegging is concerned, it all went well until after I kegged, bottled, and read the instructions correctly.

I noted that the instructions called for decanting from the wort before pouring into the keg. It also mentioned adding sugar for secondary fermentation, this is where I did things incorrectly, so lets discuss secondary fermentation sugar.

A bit foamy

The Mini Keg distributor recommends using Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 for the secondary fermentation. And since basic recommendations is around 8gm of sugar per litre, it would call for 40gm of sugar, or around 2 Tbsp. I also added Brew Enhancer 2 to the rest of the bottles as well, as control. After packing up, I then read the instructions again for the keg, and noted that Min Keg recommend 1/3 cup of sugar for 30Litres, or around 2gm per litre, meaning I should have only added around 10gm into the Keg, or about 2 tspn of sugar for secondary fermentation. Oops.

So I tried the Keg after around three weeks and the result was a beer under a lot of pressure. I don't have the gas kit so I was planning on using gravity poured method. I did not want to open the top by pushing in the plug and have the beer foam all over the place as I was really concerned that would happen with the extra sugar. So the plan was to release the pressure by doing around a cup first then pitch into a glass, mistake two.

Clear but not many bubbles

So the cup just filled full of foam and being a nice rounded floor, managed to spray some over the coffee machine, cupboard doors and floor. I poured a glass and as one can see by the picture, the head ended very big and thinned very quickly showing very poor retention, meaning, I opened too early. I pushed in the top and poured another glass, still very foamy and not a lot of gas, so fermentation is going OK, but, too early. The taste was as expected, full, but the complete lack of texture really brought it down. The bottles did not fair much better at this point either. It was closer to six weeks before it became really well gassed, and even then light rather than fine.

Finally nice and ready for some Linux gaming

So I have since re done the Keg, but used the Coopers Carbination Drops as I know they work well, only adding 2 too the Keg, roughly the converted number for the drops according to the instructions. This brew is also the Coopers DIY English Bitter, my favourite of the Coopers international range of home brews. Costs me around the AUS$27 mark with 500gm of light dry malt and I get around 24 PET bottles. I'll let you know how that one goes, but I will be trying the bottles first and ensure the beer is OK for a better Keg expirience.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little story into mini kegs, and I will definitely be getting more, maybe even the full five keg and gas kit. They fit in the fridge just right, they look like they will stack well, and cleaning is really easy. They're also quite easy to transport and wont break when dropped, and I doubt they will explode either. I definitely recommend them for your next Coopers DIY home brew.