Mini Cask with Tyre Valve Experiment (+pics)

[jmc]

Recently a friend kindly gave me his Adnams mini-cask (after emptying it).
I was initially just interested in the Adnams yeast, but that's a separate story.

After harvesting yeast I was left with the mini-cask and found it was reasonably easy to remove the top stopper.
I wondered if I could use the cask to take 5L of bright-beer to a family get together over the holiday.

I find if I just pore beer from keg/corny into a bottle its flat by the time I get to party / event, and if I take bottle-conditioned beer the journey can still up the yeast making the beer cloudy.

Because of this I've previously tried adding tyre valves to plastic 1L & 2L bottles, and this has worked well.
pic of valve in 2L pet lid and valves as purchased from eBay. - More info on this here


Last night I wanted to see if I could do something similar with the mini-cask.
First I drilled a 2mm, then 10mm hole for the valve, in the flat part near the hole in the middle (so I could hold it while fitting it)
pic after removing swarf with small file and rinsing..


I've added valves to plastic kegs before and they're fiddly, so this time I tried to thread this one in by wrapping some fairly chuncky bendable wire around it to help me manouver it into the hole.


On 2nd attempt it worked Pic showing valve fixed in place and side view of top plug/seal.

I filled it with cold water to test, leaving an inch or so air space in the top.
Pic with top seal fitted back


I then upped pressure to about 15psi with heath-robinson CO2 gun (more of this in other post mentioned above)


Pic with tap slightly opened showing beer rushing our under pressure.


I checked the keg today and it had kept a seal well.
In fact it had kept it too well The cask was crushed as it looked like a part-vacuum had occoured in cask


After a while I realised that this happened because I tested it in plain water . (I didn't want to risk my beer )

I'd forgotten that CO2 was very soluble in water, especially at about 3C (in my garage).
I'd also vented keg (automatically as I do with corneys) to remove air, so it only had a CO2 in top 1 inch.
Result when CO2 disssolved in water it caused a part-vacuum and can got crushed.

Luckily when I added pressure again it (noisily) sprang back to shape with just the odd dent.

[DrewBrews]

Double post

[DrewBrews]

This seems like a bloody good idea.

I bought one of these mini casks years ago when it was cheap but have never got round to using it. Might have to give this a go.

[Fil]

TOP JOB.. Nice simple solution.. and a lot more robust than the clip to top party tap/co2 injector i use which after a few samples could easily be snapped if removed incorrectly..

id watch out for any evidence of rust at the cut tho? i think the mini kegs are steel with a protective inner film coating? but as long as the cut was clean and the valve seals off the cut surface ok you should be fine ....

[jmc]

TOP JOB.. Nice simple solution.. and a lot more robust than the clip to top party tap/co2 injector i use which after a few samples could easily be snapped if removed incorrectly..

id watch out for any evidence of rust at the cut tho? i think the mini kegs are steel with a protective inner film coating? but as long as the cut was clean and the valve seals off the cut surface ok you should be fine ....

Cheers Fil

You're probably right about lid. I thought it might be aluminum but it was much harder.

The beauty of those valves is they have a decent sized rubber washer that seals on inside and nut on outside making sealing easy and hole-size not too critical.

With use in earnest over the weekend.
ATB John

[floydmeddler]

Just seeing this. Brilliant JMC!

[subfaction]

Absolutely having x4 plastic barrels, and no budget to go Corni yet, this looks like it would sort me out nicely as a stepping stone. Good work fella!

[mozza]

Would one of these work rather than going down the regulator route?
http://www.tyreinflators.co.uk/index.ph ... category=4
Just to give the keg a little burst to maintain carbonation?

cheers,

sam

[jmc]

Would one of these work rather than going down the regulator route?
http://www.tyreinflators.co.uk/index.ph ... category=4
Just to give the keg a little burst to maintain carbonation?

cheers,

sam

The CO2 cylinders aren't specified as food grade, but I can't see why not.
Spare cylinders are easy to get, but you might need to check on compatibility - see notes here about 16g bulbs

I think you can part-use a cylinder from the description, but you may want to check that you can just use part of a cylinder to top up otherwise it would get expensive.

[mozza]

ideal cheers mate. As to your set up how exactly is the co2 connected?

[jmc]

ideal cheers mate. As to your set up how exactly is the co2 connected?

I've added a post explaining how I connected CO2 cylinder to tyre inflator
see Connect Pub CO2 to Tyre Inflator

[mozza]

Thanks so much!

[Cazamodo]

Sorry if this has already been asked.

Whats the shelf life of these casks. And how about once opened? I know from use they say 3-4 days. But as we would be using co2 to push the beer our and not relying on letting air in. Would it last longer?

[mozza]

Would last a good year I'd imagine using co2 but with such a small cask it would never last more than a month

[jmc]

Sorry if this has already been asked.

Whats the shelf life of these casks. And how about once opened? I know from use they say 3-4 days. But as we would be using co2 to push the beer our and not relying on letting air in. Would it last longer?

I'd purge with co2 to minimise oxidation and extend shelf life. I would hope they'd last as long as a plastic keg or corny.

I'm thinging of getting a few as I like the idea of 24L brew length = 1 corny + 1 mini keg.