In the Brew Room this Week

     Its been quite hectic these least 2 weeks, what with Easter, beer festivals and brewing up the Stouts, so now it's time to catch up. The two Stouts, Siberian Crude and the Oatmeal have both finished their primary fermentation and been moved into a pair of 19L kegs that have been partially modified to allow us to brew in them
      The Siberian Crude being an Imperial Stout is sitting at about 8.5% with some coffee notes in the background and a nice warmth to it ( this will need at least 4 - 6 months before even thinking about drinking it ) and the Oatmeal Stout is sitting at about 3.5% with big coffee and dark chocolate notes.
     The American Pale Ale has been bottled and we are looking forward to trying that in a week or so.

     Keg modifications - the up take tube inside has been cut down by about 4cm (doing this means you don't pick up as much sediment from the bottom) as we plan to keg condition (same as bottle conditioning, prime the beer with sugar transfer to the keg and seal it up the yeast will use up the sugar and the resultant pressure from the CO2 will carbonate the beer )our beers. This has the added benefit of not needing to force carbonate (connecting a CO2 bottle and ramping the pressure right up, then rolling the keg around to  get it mixed in) the beer. This is sort of what the CAMRA  ( Campaign for Real Ale ) guys in Brittan are doing, although they go further by using wooden casks and gravity (we will use CO2 to get the beer out of the kegs).
     The second modification is simply to use a short length of hose on the gas in line and add an air lock to it, this means the beer can ferment and vent the gas as normal. Then after the ferment prime and seal.

http://www.camra.org.uk/