Are they better than charging Randal with Nerds? :-\
Sorry I only had hops in a randall before. It usually changes the beer…and I feel oftentimes for the better. I have no doubt you could put plenty of things in it to make your beer terrible… Just as you can put plenty of things in the beer itself during the process of making it to make it terrible… It’s just another tool.
You could easily cover the white plastic parts with metal and make the whole thing look more steampunk.
We’ve used a randall with coffee beans, that was good. I’ve tried a beer with fruit in the randall, that was not good. You can do lots of stuff.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. People want to SEE what’s in the Randall. That’s the gimmick part.
Like I said earlier, I did a Randall with centennial, Columbus and citra with crushed grapefruit in second chamber and it was fantastically good. So no argument from me that there can be a positive contribution to the beer. But the beer drinker enjoys seeing his beer pushed through the Randall as much or more than flavor contribution. That’s why a clear Randall is a must if doing events.
If your just doing it at home, not do much.
I’ve only seen these locally with breweries using what looks like a water filter without the carbon filter.
yeah usually individuals don’t make/buy them for themselves… My homebrew club has one that we use for events.
A freind of mine, who also happens to be the engineering manager at Dogfish, and a member of my homebrew club has a Randall. I’ve had beer infused with some gourmet coffe beans through the Randall that was really nice. It’s pretty neat watching the beer travel through it. I’d love to have one. On the expensive side, but very cool.
Sam Calagione attended a Sunshine Challenge in Orlando 10-12 years ago. He brought Randal with him. It was pretty cool, albeit the beer was a bit foamy. It looks as if they’ve fixed the foaming problem with the second chamber.
All this hand wringing about PVC and plastic - from people who only brew and serve their beers using glass and stainless steel, no doubt. :
We built our for about $75
At least half of the fun of the randall is watching the beer go through. I think that would be enhanced if it looked like a weird old contraption, but that is purely aesthetic.