Bottled = Fizzy and bright,Keg = Flat n cloudy

[nath812]

Hi all,

First time brew and its sort of half ok!

I have purched a youngs lager kit with one of thier 5 gal pressure barrels (cheap one). I was not expecting mircles but I was expecting the same taste/carbonation/look form the keg and the bottles I made.

I did the kit as per instructions, but as my house is quite warm (22/23 - old neighbours, mid terrace!) the 1st fermentation was over within 4 days and was fizzing and poppin' away nicely with a big head to start which died down after the 2nd day. I left it for a day extra (Gravity @ 1008 for 3 days)and decided to bottle a small amount (8 x 300ml bottles) and keg the rest. I made sure everything was clean and sterile and started to move.

The beer was still cloudy at this point but I thought that may clear in time. The keg was half fulled then half a pint of the brew was microwaved with 85g of sugar to make it dissolve (saw on this forum). Then the rest was added and the bottles tapped off, before vaselining the top screw. Half the bottles had an extra 1/2 tsp of sugar to see what difference that made. I left them in the house for another 2 days before transfering the keg to the shed.

At this point I opened 2 of the bottles (1 of each type) and to my suprise they had nearly cleared and were well carbed with a fair head, slight yeasty taste but overall quite impressed!

So I put the rest in the fridge and opened them 2 nights ago (so 13 days) And they were clear, carbed and tasted better (less of the twang). Great I thought, a result from such a cheap kit!

Then I tried the keg..... The first 2 pints were thrown as it was cloudy (think this was the sediment coming out?) but the beer shot out so I was under the impression it was all under pressure. The next pint wasnt very carbed again but had a head that lasted for the whole pint, and so did the next, but still very cloudy The next day my mate came round and I got one out and it just sort of glugged out, still cloudy, no carbonation. Its like there is no pressure. Also the pints from the keg tasted so different, it wasnt nasty, just not the same as the bottles at all.

Where have I gone wrong is kegged lager not as "fizzy " as bottled? Why is the keg cloudy and why did they taste so different from each other. Is it best for me to keg bitter and bottle my lager?

Sorry for the long post but wanted all the info I could for you!

Ta,


Nath
ps - Im still well chuffed that I "made" beer and will be buying another barrel friday! WooHoo!

[b.all]

the beer in the keg may well have got a bit oxidised as you only half filled it with beer leaving quite a bit of air above it in the keg which will have reacted with it and probably spoilt the taste a bit.

you lack of pressure now issue is due to the fact that some of the beer has now been tapped off. the carbon dioxide created by priming will be partly filling the space above your beer and that will be under pressure so will help force the beer downwards and through the tap. when you drink some of the beer the amount of space above the beer is now bigger but with still the same amount of co2 so it is at lower pressure (PV=nRT) which means it won't force the beer downwards and will actually hold the beer up where it is due to the pulling force it will exert and the surface tension of the beer due to being mainly water. to remedy this you need to get an S30 co2 canister to squirt a small amount of gas through the valve on the top of your keg.

i'm not sure what the issue with your cloudiness is unless you accidently transferred all the stuff of the bottom of your fermenting vessel into the keg as that will contain a huge amount of dead or hibernating yeast and cause you quite a few cloudy pints.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Beer clears from the top downwards so if you think of the individual yeast cells falling very slowly to the bottom they're obviously going fall the height of a bottle quicker than the height of a keg. So I expect the keg is cloudy simply because you haven't left it long enough. Try giving it another couple of weeks. As for carbonation, you'll get more pressure in a bottle than a keg (unless you go down the Cornelius Keg route). Also I suspect that having bottled some of the brew, you had a really big air gap in the keg and the bigger the air gap the less the pressure can build up. It's also quite possible that your keg isn't air-tight.

[nath812]

Thanks for the uber-quick replys guys. So from now on Im going rto bottle my lager and keg my bitter as that seems a good way to do it as I want me Lager carbed and my bitter un-fizzy!

Do you think I could re-bottle the beer from the keg then add a tad more sugar? Would this work?

Thanks again!

Nath