hand pump and corni

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dazer23866
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hand pump and corni

Post by dazer23866 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 1:07 pm

Hi all ive been looking for a way to get that real ale taste you get from a keg to a hand pull. i have tried bags in boxes and things but with no great success, so i wondered about the corni method. forgive me if i am being really thick but if you carb the corni the resulting beer would be the same as if you used a party tap or am i wrong.

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by TheSumOfAllBeers » Thu Aug 18, 2016 1:16 pm

Get a cask.

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by orlando » Thu Aug 18, 2016 1:49 pm

TheSumOfAllBeers wrote:Get a cask.
Yes but he probably needs a bit more than that. Particularly if he doesn't intend to drink a whole pin or firkin in 3 days. The idea of using a cornie has some advantages for example they are a little easier to store and serve from. With casks it is possible to dispense with them on end but they still take up more space because of the width of a cask when upright. Both will require a blanket of CO2 which is replaced as a beer is drawn off so that also means a cask widget or similar. With a cornie you can achieve a half way house by carbonating the beer in it rather than using cask conditioning techniques. The latter may not be as good as cask beer but it is a lot easier to cater for and requires little extra kit than the OP may already have. I fortunately have both options and would definitely take the same route of cornie set up first cask second.
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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by T5FAU » Thu Aug 18, 2016 2:13 pm

Hand pumps connected to Cornys are perfectly fine. You will probably need a demand valve fitted as close to the pump as possible though. This demand valve opens when negative pressure is present on the pump side (you've pulled the handle). Without this demand valve then the pressure from the corny will constantly push beer through the hand pull. I keep my cornys at 5psi and serve through hand pull. Its a much better pour than through dalex taps etc, proper ale like.

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dazer23866
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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by dazer23866 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 3:56 pm

Thanks for the help guys so it's as I suspected the same as a party tap so i may as well use that.
I'm looking for the that natural carbonation which looks like I can't get that from a Corni keg.
Someone needs to invent the 5L stainless steel cask I'd have 5 of them straight away
Cheers

T5FAU

Re: hand pump and corni

Post by T5FAU » Thu Aug 18, 2016 4:03 pm

dazer23866 wrote:Thanks for the help guys so it's as I suspected the same as a party tap so i may as well use that.
I'm looking for the that natural carbonation which looks like I can't get that from a Corni keg.
Someone needs to invent the 5L stainless steel cask I'd have 5 of them straight away
Cheers
Hand pull WILL give you lower carbed pint as the swan necks knock out the carbonation.

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by dazer23866 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:08 pm

T5FAU wrote:
dazer23866 wrote:Thanks for the help guys so it's as I suspected the same as a party tap so i may as well use that.
I'm looking for the that natural carbonation which looks like I can't get that from a Corni keg.
Someone needs to invent the 5L stainless steel cask I'd have 5 of them straight away
Cheers
Hand pull WILL give you lower carbed pint as the swan necks knock out the carbonation.

Ah now your talking
At a lower psi say 5 psi would gas not come out of the lid or would you turn the gas off each time
But then I'm thinking I would lose all carbonation or am I wrong.

So how would I go about it once transfers to keg would I force carb or maybe prime with sugar?

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by Brighteyebeer » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:17 pm

I secondary ferment in my cornies - it definitely tastes better than force carb'd. Just keep a low 'blanket' pressure in the keg once tapped. Around 2 to 4 psi keeps air out of the keg, and prevents the CO2 in the beer from dissipating into the head space in the keg. Such low pressures don't force cylinder gas into the beer.
It may not be real ale by CAMRA's definition, but it's close as makes no difference IMHO.

You can turn the gas off at the cylinder when not serving. Provided your system is gas-tight, there should be no loss of pressure. A BE is not likely to be gas-tight, tho'. You'll need valves between keg and BE to i) keep pressure in the beer lines, and ii) prevent back-flow from the pump pushing beer back into the keg, disturbing the sediment.
Last edited by Brighteyebeer on Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by Kev888 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:26 pm

The traditional cask approach involves letting it breathe air, but unfortunately in a homebrew situation you may not be able to finish the keg/cask before it oxidises too much and becomes nasty. To prevent that you would need some way of stopping oxygen getting in as you draw off the beer. Some purists would argue that this alone prevents your goal truly being achieved, although you can get damn close IMO.

The bag-in-box or polypin will work to some degree because it collapses (instead of drawing air in) as you draw out the beer, and may well keep the beer fresh long enough for you. Being unpressurised its easy to use with a beer engine, and there are even adaptors available to do that. A stainless vessel with a cask breather or very low pressure regulator (and a demand valve if used with a beer engine) would keep the beer fresh for longer if you need that. My own preference would be crusader/sankey style kegs as they will reliably seal at low or even zero pressure - not all cornies do (especially used ones) as they aren't designed for that type of use, whilst (IMO) casks are fun but more faff to use and less well suited to using with gas.

However preferences on vessel vary and so may yours; the key thing is not to overdo the pressure, as that will force-carbonate the beer to higher levels than is traditional with casks. A cask breather can be used to essentially just replace the beer being dispensed with CO2, but the pressure is low enough that carbonation can gradually drop over time. Another method is to use just enough pressure to maintain equilibrium and prevent the carbonation dropping; for me that is more practical if you take a long time to drink a keg's worth. It doesn't matter massively if you force carbonate or prime, but there is a school of thought that priming produces a subtly different (e.g. smoother) texture to the carbonation. No gas method is strictly acceptable to many camra members BTW, though the cask breather is a slight grey area, but IMO camra's guides have no place in dictating a homebrew setup (unless the home-brewer genuinely wants to follow them).

The beer engine/hand pump does give a slightly different quality compared to most free-flow taps, especially party taps on short lines. Particularly if fitted with a sparkler, it works in conjunction with the (relatively low carbonation) beer to achieve a quite subtle kind of liveliness. I seem to recall some people have simulated this by using a syringe in their pint of beer - I think they called it a pocket beer engine!

However compared to simple taps, beer engines are costly, more work to look after and tend to waste more beer (they have a cylinder which fills with beer, and this can go off between serving sessions, so gets discarded before drawing fresh through). They are fun to use and the whole approach is a worthy aim, but takes a bit more effort and commitment than bunging a line and tap on a corny.
Kev

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by bobsbeer » Sat Aug 20, 2016 1:16 pm

As others have said you can use cornies for low pressure dispense, but you will need an aspirator to keep the beer decent for a good while. You can get aspirators that add co2 at low pressure as you pull off beer. They usually cost around £30 or so. An equally good alternative is to get hold of a propane regulator and change the fitting to allow a tube to be connected. They dispense at around 1/2 psi which is perfect. Even new only cost about £5.

This type. Just take off the gas cylinder connector and fit a nipple.
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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by dazer23866 » Sun Aug 21, 2016 7:48 am

bobsbeer wrote:As others have said you can use cornies for low pressure dispense, but you will need an aspirator to keep the beer decent for a good while. You can get aspirators that add co2 at low pressure as you pull off beer. They usually cost around £30 or so. An equally good alternative is to get hold of a propane regulator and change the fitting to allow a tube to be connected. They dispense at around 1/2 psi which is perfect. Even new only cost about £5.

This type. Just take off the gas cylinder connector and fit a nipple.
Image
Sort to be so thick but how do you fit the new nipple and where do you get one from

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Bunglebrewsbeer
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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by Bunglebrewsbeer » Mon Sep 05, 2016 10:23 am

Same as above. What do you do?


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bobsbeer

Re: hand pump and corni

Post by bobsbeer » Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:22 am

Sorry for the late reply. The nipple can be got from all sorts of places. If I recall the thread was 1/4" BSP, something like this. Just google male hose barb.

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Re: hand pump and corni

Post by Fil » Sat Sep 17, 2016 4:23 pm

I think i can pour a fair hommage to a hand pulled pint from my corny kegs and a dalex style flow control tap, the trick is not to over condition and to serve at the lowest pressure you can tune your regulator too 2-4psi in my case. Serve at 10-12C and
tweak the flow control on the tap to a slow pour, pop the glass under the tap open and wait as the glass fills..

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while it wont please a camra nut it works for me and the beer in a corny has a lot longer shelf life than the usual cask.

The pocket beer engine ( a 10-20 ml syringe) can be used to put a head on a pint with a simple suck/squirt that pours a little flat if you have northern tendencies..
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