pkrahn
Member
Hi HBT,
I've gotten lots of useful information from these forums over the past winter as I've made batches of dark beer, light beer, red wine, white wine, blackberry wine, cider and mead... however I can't find a suitable answer to my big current dilemna so I thought I'd ask for some specific advice from, maybe some of you experts can shed some light.
So most of this stuff is being brewed for this event we do every year...
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/festival_2010
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/festival_report_2009
I thought this time I'd like to be able to give away beverages for free, and if I learned to brew I could afford to. And now that I have all these great brews sitting inside of carboys now I need to carbonate at least some of them.
The thing is, this event happens at 2200m up in a mountain basin. We'll be (gently) slinging the food and drink and instruments up there with a chopper. The music by the way is all acoustic, round a campfire. It's a lot of fun. And the food is delicious we have great cooks.
Even if the helicopter pilot was careful enough, we still couldn't carbonate naturally because just the drive up the logging road to get close to the mountain, that would really shake up the brews.
So force carbonating seems like the way to go. All I need is 3 or 4 cornelius kegs for the beers and one of the ciders and I'm set, right? Problem is, I can't find any corny kegs in the Pacific Northwest, I could order them but I'd be way over budget, with shipping and all. There's one place I found in the States that sells used ones but they don't even guarantee they won't need a bunch of maintenance. I have limited time and skills for that kind of thing.
That may still be my best option but there must be something else! Plastic pressure barrels sound like they don't hold enough pressure. Mini kegs would be similar, no? I need steel I assume.
My other apparent option is to carbonate on-site. It might be cool (pun intended) to break off chunks of the nearby glacier that feeds the lakes and fill a vessel with its ice and put PET bottles of beer inside. People could just grab one and quickly screw on the carbonation device and pressurize as desired?
I'm wondering how cold that beer would need to be in order for this to work smoothly? And what I would need to set it up?
In that case we'd have to keep filling the ice with bottles of beer and making sure people grabbed the colder ones.
That would mean I'd have to spend at least $200 on PET bottles, which people might also end up using as ashtrays, but hopefully not. Sounds like the cheapest option so far though. It would be great to pre-carbonate them but I just don't see how, in such challenging environment.
Also, does anyone know if the slightly higher elevation would make it easier or more difficult to inject CO2?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
I've gotten lots of useful information from these forums over the past winter as I've made batches of dark beer, light beer, red wine, white wine, blackberry wine, cider and mead... however I can't find a suitable answer to my big current dilemna so I thought I'd ask for some specific advice from, maybe some of you experts can shed some light.
So most of this stuff is being brewed for this event we do every year...
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/festival_2010
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/festival_report_2009
I thought this time I'd like to be able to give away beverages for free, and if I learned to brew I could afford to. And now that I have all these great brews sitting inside of carboys now I need to carbonate at least some of them.
The thing is, this event happens at 2200m up in a mountain basin. We'll be (gently) slinging the food and drink and instruments up there with a chopper. The music by the way is all acoustic, round a campfire. It's a lot of fun. And the food is delicious we have great cooks.
Even if the helicopter pilot was careful enough, we still couldn't carbonate naturally because just the drive up the logging road to get close to the mountain, that would really shake up the brews.
So force carbonating seems like the way to go. All I need is 3 or 4 cornelius kegs for the beers and one of the ciders and I'm set, right? Problem is, I can't find any corny kegs in the Pacific Northwest, I could order them but I'd be way over budget, with shipping and all. There's one place I found in the States that sells used ones but they don't even guarantee they won't need a bunch of maintenance. I have limited time and skills for that kind of thing.
That may still be my best option but there must be something else! Plastic pressure barrels sound like they don't hold enough pressure. Mini kegs would be similar, no? I need steel I assume.
My other apparent option is to carbonate on-site. It might be cool (pun intended) to break off chunks of the nearby glacier that feeds the lakes and fill a vessel with its ice and put PET bottles of beer inside. People could just grab one and quickly screw on the carbonation device and pressurize as desired?
I'm wondering how cold that beer would need to be in order for this to work smoothly? And what I would need to set it up?
In that case we'd have to keep filling the ice with bottles of beer and making sure people grabbed the colder ones.
That would mean I'd have to spend at least $200 on PET bottles, which people might also end up using as ashtrays, but hopefully not. Sounds like the cheapest option so far though. It would be great to pre-carbonate them but I just don't see how, in such challenging environment.
Also, does anyone know if the slightly higher elevation would make it easier or more difficult to inject CO2?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!