The latest brew, Dogbolter, is made to 24 pints. I was planning to put this in one of my Cornies but a friend of mine raised concerns that in his experience filling one short had delivered less than perfect results. My thoughts are to give it a blast of co2 to give it a bit of protection and let nature take it's course.
Does anyone have any experiences of short filling a Cornie, good or bad ?
Short filling cornies
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ECW
Re: Short filling cornies
I am afraid I can't speak from experience as my first cornie still has a brew maturing in it 
, and therefore I will happily bow to an experienced member.
Using a bit of A-level chemistry, however, I don't think you can condition beer easily with all that headspace. Thinking about the empty space above the beer, you will need proportionally more gas to achieve the necessary conditioning pressure. For a fixed temperature and mass of gas, pressure x volume = constant. 23 pints is about 13.5 litres, so the empty space is about 23 - 13.5 litres = 9.5 litres. You'd expect headspace of say 1 litre from a full cornie, so you would need 9.5 times as much gas to get the same pressure to condition the beer. If you don't generate that gas from priming, your pressure will be 9.5 times lower than you expect and the beer won't carbonate.
That said, if you pressurise from a bottle to sufficient pressure to force carbonate it will make no difference to the outcome - you will just use more gas to achieve the same effect. Using CO2 to blanket the beer will probably stop the auto-oxidation, but won't help condition it unless the pressure is sufficient to force carbonate it. There are a few threads on here with suggestions of suitable pressures and techniques for force carbonation.
So, yes, I think you will get away with it, as long as the pressure is sufficient to achieve the carbonation you want.
Hope this helps,
Ed
, and therefore I will happily bow to an experienced member.Using a bit of A-level chemistry, however, I don't think you can condition beer easily with all that headspace. Thinking about the empty space above the beer, you will need proportionally more gas to achieve the necessary conditioning pressure. For a fixed temperature and mass of gas, pressure x volume = constant. 23 pints is about 13.5 litres, so the empty space is about 23 - 13.5 litres = 9.5 litres. You'd expect headspace of say 1 litre from a full cornie, so you would need 9.5 times as much gas to get the same pressure to condition the beer. If you don't generate that gas from priming, your pressure will be 9.5 times lower than you expect and the beer won't carbonate.
That said, if you pressurise from a bottle to sufficient pressure to force carbonate it will make no difference to the outcome - you will just use more gas to achieve the same effect. Using CO2 to blanket the beer will probably stop the auto-oxidation, but won't help condition it unless the pressure is sufficient to force carbonate it. There are a few threads on here with suggestions of suitable pressures and techniques for force carbonation.
So, yes, I think you will get away with it, as long as the pressure is sufficient to achieve the carbonation you want.
Hope this helps,
Ed