What a day for the fermentables. Brewed a batch of the Dark Cherry Stout and got it into primary. Also, messed with the wine. I got a packet of wine yeast (Montrachet, thanks for asking), pre-soaked it in a quarter cup of water, opened up the bucket, dumped the juice from the original bucket into a sanitized one that I’ve used before, and added the yeast. It’s now merrily bubbling under a vodka filled airlock, rather than under a dangerously swollen plastic lid. Plus, I messed with it, so I’m much happier. When I opened the bucket, the juice was effervescing. It was awesome.
On to the real success of the day: The kegging worked, 100%. The uncarbonated batch of Imperial Stout was remarkably easy to clean up and pour into the keg. Think “dip, open, dump, dip, open, dump.” Then, I just followed the directions on the keg. Got things sealed up, and temporarily brought the pressure in the keg up to 30PSI. This accelerates the process of dissolving CO2 in the beer. You dispense with just enough pressure to push the beer out through the serving hose … but maintaining it under pressure keeps the CO2 dissolved. I was supposed to wait 24 hours, but I employed a technique known as “shaking the keg” to “vastly increase the surface area available for the gas to dissolve.” That done, waited a few more hours, dialed the pressure back from 30PSI to 10 (just following the instructions at this point), and poured myself a lukewarm, but fully carbonated pint. The old “dump it in a chilled mug” trick cooled things down enough for me to declare unmitigated victory.
I’ll work on refrigeration later.
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