Silly question of the week.
Is it possible to force-carbonate a porter within half an hour or so and be able to pour a decent glass?
I’m currently abroad and need to prolong my stay until Wednesday. On Thursday there’s an introduction into kegging in our new homebrew club. I was planning to slow-carbonate the porter by then, but that’s now impossible. I understand it can be done within 24 hours, but can it also be done within 30 minutes, so that people can observe the process?
Ah yes, no beer should be harmed in the process. I.e. this should be reversible when things go wrong.
Do you have access to a paint shaker? If the beer is ice-cold and you have the keg upside down (or hook up the gas to the out post so it bubbles up through the beer), then you might be able to do it at safe PSI’s (or kPa if that’s your thing over there) under constant agitation. But that’s just a guess. No clue what pressure you would need to be on target at half an hour.
Yes, it can be done. Have the keg cold, turn up the pressure to 30 psi and shake the keg for a minute. Relieve the pressure both on the keg and on the regulator and turn on the gas again, turn up the pressure until you start to hear gas bubbling in -that will be the current carbonation/saturation level. You are trying for about 10 psi.
The first couple of pints will probably be foamy.
You will need to shake the keg longer than 1 minute. Try at least 5 for starters.
I do a lot of demos for work. It is always good to practice before giving your demo to an audience.
Yeah, I’ve never been able to pour that soon after shaking without mostly foam.
I’m not afraid of goofing up in public, but there’s no point risking seriously foamy beer, so I’ll force-carbonate 1 day in advance. So please a 24 hour force-carbonation method with the added complication that the keg contains only 12 liters? Much obliged!
No need to change the method described above, the extra time will let the beer settle. I think of it like shaking up a bottle of soda. If you open it right away, it foams like crazy, but if you let it settle it won’t foam when opened.
The real trick here is not to over carbonate. I agree that it will take more than a minute, however I like Jeffy’s method and just repeat as necessary. It’s easy to over-carbonate a beer when agitating with 30 PSI. I think that will allow you to better know when to stop.
Is this amount in a smaller keg or regular 5 gal corny?
5 gallon.
One more question: is yeast lying on the bottom of the fermenter active? If so, in what way? If not, why can’t it be removed during fermentation?