This looks sweet, but at $375… it seems a bit steep. It looks easy enought to build, but what do I know?
I’m still deciding whether or not to build an older version of the Randall with a whole house water filter (cost around $30), but it just isn’t as sexy and is prone to excessive foaming with the versions I’ve seen in use.
I even went to a brewpub that had a Randall in use and the bartender was using a spoon to remove the excessive foam from the pint glass! Why use a Randall if you’re going to remove the foam?! Figure out how to reduce the foaming (chill the lines, for example).
Regardless, It’d be nice to build a Randall that remains chilled until service so the beer is less foamy.
Anybody recognize the components well enough to help me figure out where to get the parts/price them out.
Anybody have a great version of a Randall they’d like to share? Post pics please!
…that is just freaking awesome. Never occurred to me you could DIY one so easily (and cheaply!).
How was the effect, Drew? As good as you can imagine?
I had ApriHop at a summer beerfest and the Randall was packed with hops and halved apricots - one of the freshest-tasting, more delicious beers I’ve had.
Of course, that’s the point of the new gizmo. One pressurized chamber to infuse, a second to settle down the foam and then a variable resistance faucet to balance.
I would think you’d want to push the beer in line all of the way to the bottom and draw off of the bottom too, the foam will rise to the top that way. Then maybe a very long line after that so that you need a lot of pressure to push the beer to the faucet - the more pressure the more it should reduce the foaming in the second vessel. That’s how it works in my head anyway, maybe not in reality
The only problem with the fixed long line (which I agree with) is that you’ll never be able to dynamically adjust. Hmm, wonder what it would take to make a dynamic faucet…
Could the foaming also be a function of the filter canister being at room temp and the beer is just warming and releasing the gas due to contact with the warmer hop mass and the head loss through the hop bed?
Has anyone tried placing one of these units in an ice bath to see if it helps?
Serves double duty! use it as a filter into the bright tank. After carbonation, add a porous tube and insert hops and/or fresh fruit and away you go.
When using it as a filter, you could also add any flavor extract to the center “output” of the cartridge. The extract flavors would get blended into the beer immediately after the filtering.
