– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our homebrew podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the podcast where we answer YOUR homebrew questions and we discuss all things related to craft beer!
We hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend last week with lots of time with family and delicious homebrew. I was lucky enough to have LOTS of homebrew on tap – my aunt & uncle brewed a California Common and it was ready by Easter Sunday and then my pop and I also took our homebrewed IPA with us to the family gathering and it was a big hit too. Too much fun, friends!
On Today’s Show:
I’ve been spoiled rotten lately having both Todd (Kegconnection) and James (CMBecker) on the show to help answer all of your brewing questions. On this episode, we received two questions recently regarding yeast. One asks about what to expect when you ferment a beer near the lower temperature spectrum recommended by that yeast company versus the higher temperature end of the spectrum. The other question asks very plainly – how do you know which yeast to choose when there’s so many options?! It can be overwhelming but, hopefully, we provide some clarity for you today.
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor! Easy-peasy, right?
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
Ah, stout. Black velvet in a glass, topped with a rich, creamy head you could eat with a spoon. Enthralling cascades of bubbles as the head settles, and a heavy lace left behind. Silky-smooth mouthfeel with just a tiny hint of carbonation. It sure would be nice to brew something at home that had the magical qualities of a well-pulled glass of stout. It may seem out of reach, but if you brew and condition your beer appropriately, and serve it correctly, you actually can get that same experience at home. The key to the whole thing is nitrogen gas.
What is a Nitro Pour, and When Should I Consider One?
There are a couple of things to be aware of before you pour all your beer through Nitro. If you try this with a beer that already has a rich mouthfeel, it may become even heavier, and can even feel almost oily. Partly because there’s less gas to come out of solution and bring them to your nose, aroma can be diminished – and we all know aroma and flavor are linked, so this in turn can mean an apparent reduction in flavor. And last but not least, serving on nitro will diminish the perception of hop bitterness.
This means that your crazy-aromatic, 120 IBU triple IPA is probably not the best candidate for this treatment. The best choices will be lower in alcohol and body and fairly richly flavored, preferring malt flavors to hops. Not to say those other beers wouldn’t be interesting on nitro, but this really is a method made for milder stouts.
How to Serve Your Beer with Nitrogen
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To serve homebrewed stout on nitro, you’ll need to begin with a kegging system, and add some components. There are bottled stouts with a nitro pour, but it’s simply not practical for homebrewers to bottle beer with the widget in the bottle and the high pressure of nitrogen required for the cascading pour.
Of course, you’ll need a stout faucet. This is a specially designed faucet that includes a restrictor plate inside. This completely blocks off the flow of beer through the faucet except for the needle streams that come through the small holes. It’s really the turbulence caused by the beer’s passage through these holes that causes the magical dense, cascading head.
In order to push the beer through these tiny holes at any kind of reasonable rate (and to generate the turbulence you need), you’ll have to push the beer much harder than you would to pour regular carbonated beer through a standard faucet. Most people pour nitro beer at around 30 PSI. And, because carbonation levels are related to storage temperature and carbon dioxide pressure, if we did this with nothing but CO2, the beer would soon be massively over-carbonated. Since the turbulence caused by the restrictor plate causes most of the dissolved gas to come out of solution, over-carbonated beer would gush impressively if served at high pressure through a stout faucet.
Clearly, then, we need to push the beer with a gas that won’t dissolve so readily in beer. Fortunately, nitrogen* has the properties we need. For ease of handling, the easiest thing to do is to add a bottle of “beer gas” to your kegging rig. Your usual gas supplier may very well sell it – they might know it as “Guinness gas” or just mixed gas for beer. What you’ll get is usually about 75% nitrogen and 25% CO2, although that may vary somewhat. You’ll also need the correct regulator for this bottle, as it will use left-handed threads. If your usual supplier looks at you oddly when you ask for these things, look for a gas supplier that specializes in beverage and tavern supply.
One optional thing that makes setting up for nitro much easier is to add a diffusion stone to the keg you intend to serve from. Do this by adding a length of tubing to the short dip tube under the gas-in post, long enough to reach the bottom of the keg, and installing an airstone on the end so that the stone sits on the bottom of the keg.
Setting Up Your System For Nitro Pours
Now, well-equipped, we’re ready to start setting up some beer for nitro pour.
First, force-carbonate your beer with carbon dioxide – but not very much. Remember that the stout faucet will cause gushing if there is too much CO2 in solution. Even the 1.5 to 2.0 volumes you would use for a British pale ale is too much; you should consult a carbonation calculator and aim for 1.0 to 1.2 volumes. In fact, freshly fermented beer kept on the cool side should contain almost enough dissolved gas that you’ll hardly have to add any at all.
Second, get some nitrogen gas into the beer. You can do this just by hooking up the chilled keg to the beer gas at 30 PSI for a couple of weeks, but if you opted for the diffusion stone, you can do this in a couple of hours. Since the gas will be injected in fine bubbles at the bottom of the keg, it will get into the beer much more quickly. Put 30 PSI of beer gas on the beer, then vent the headspace every few minutes to get more gas flowing. Do this for a half-hour or so, let it rest for a half-hour, and then do another half-hour of the vent/pressurize cycles.
Third, hook it up and serve. Pour into a tilted glass until the glass is about three-quarters full, then close the faucet and put the glass down for a minute to let the head settle a bit. Then top up so the head is just proud of the lip of the glass, and serve with pride.
Remember when you had to go to the bar for a pour like this?
About the Author
Josh Drew is a second-generation homebrewer and has been brewing since 1992. At that time, information was much harder to find and other homebrewers were harder to connect with. As such, he learned to brew from Charlie Papazian, FIDONet, and a really terrible homebrew shop. Things are much, much better now, and so is the beer he’s making.
*due to shipping regulations, we cannot ship nitrogen or co2 canisters filled with gas.
One of the questions that I get the most (being in the draft beer industry) is how to control foam. Ninety nine percent of the time, when someone is having an issue with excessive foam it is due to one or more of the three causes of foam: temperature, restriction, and carbonation levels. I will cover the three causes and their cures and then discuss the more obscure causes of foam.
Temperature
Temperature is the number one cause of foam for home draft system users. The temperature of your beer should be between 36 and 38 degrees. If your beer is warmer than this you are going to get foam, unless you use additional restriction or have your beer carbonated to a lower level. It is often discussed that British beers are served at a warmer temperature. It is no accident that they are also carbonate their beer at a lower level too. There is a direct correlation!
It is also important to remember that the inside temperature of your kegerator is not the important factor, but the actual temperature of the beer as it enters you glass. Beer temperature can be different from the kegerator temperature for several reasons, including:
Tower temperature. If you are using a beer tower it needs to be insulated and have air flowing through it. Most towers come insulated and if your draft beer system does not have a tower cooler, you can easily add one. If you don’t have one installed, your first ounce or two of beer might come out pure foam but then settle down as you finish pouring.
Shanks can get warm as well, so it is a good idea to purchase a shank that is a few inches longer than you need in order to have some transfer of the cold inside your kegerator or keezer to the outside of the shank. Remember that you have VERY little beer in the shank, so, although you might get an initial amount of foam when you first pour, it should go away once you cool down the shank as you continue to pour.
If you just kegged your beer or just put a commercial keg in the fridge it will take awhile for it to cool down and maybe even longer than you think. One of the main reasons new kegs tend to foam is that they have not cooled down enough. This can also be very misleading because after a short period of time the thermometer in your kegerator may read 38 degrees. Then, you pour a foamy beer and assume temperature is not the issue. Therefore, it is important to have the thermometer in your glass and NOT only in your kegerator. It needs to read 38 degrees or less in the glass of beer you have just poured.
Frosted mugs can also cause foam. When the beer hits the iced mug, it tends to foam. You will notice in some restaurants and bars that they serve their beer at 28 degrees into a frosted mug. This works, but then you have no foam and all the gas is actually released into your stomach (you also can’t taste your beer because it is too cold for your taste buds to detect). If you are getting excessive foam, temperature of the beer is the main culprit the vast majority of the time. Make sure you have your temperature under control before doing additional troubleshooting!
Restriction
Draft beer needs restriction in order to pour properly. Restriction can be obtained by two main methods. One is the inside diameter and length of the beer hose. The longer the hose and the smaller the inside diameter means the slower the beer travels. The slower the beer travels then the less it will foam. A good analogy of this would be to take a crowded 6 lane highway and choke it down to 1 lane. Those six lanes of cars that were traveling at 75 miles an hour are now going be going a lot slower.
The other way to control restriction is to use an inline flow control or a flow control faucet on your draft system. These give you a lot more flexibility as they can change with conditions. For example, if someone opens your kegerator too many times and your beer warms up a few degrees you can adjust the restriction on the fly and reduce foaming. If you have a higher carbonated beer (maybe you over carbonated your homebrew), you can compensate for this as well when using an inline flow control or flow control faucet. Different beers use different carbonation levels. An English beer might be carbonated to 8 PSI, a Belgium to 16 PSI. Trust me when I say that you DO NOT want to have to change your hose length in your kegerator. Even systems using a party faucet can have restriction by using products like the CMB Event Faucet.
Improper restriction can cause excessive foam or even not enough foam to create a proper head. Make sure your system is properly tuned to give you just the right amount of head on your beer!
Carbonation level
Carbonation is our friend! Without it, we are left with flat beer. You can largely control carbonation foaming using restriction and temperature. As I mentioned earlier, it is possible to have a very high carbonation lever and virtually no foam. This will give you a beer that has retained all its carbonation, which will be released into your stomach and released in two ways; neither of which will be appealing to those around you.
Carbonation level is largely determined by the style of beer. Regardless of the style, you still want a uniform head when you pour. If your beer is over-carbonated, you can serve it at a lower PSI for a while and it will lose carbonation as you serve. You can also reduce carbonation by purging some of it via the manual pressure relief valve on a homebrew keg or the manual valve on commercial couplers. Be careful not to over compensate!
Combination of factors and Troubleshooting
Excessive foam is often the result of more than one factor. You might have your beer a little over carbonated, a few degrees too warm, and not have quite enough restriction. You must be methodical in troubleshooting. Always start with temperature. The biggest mistake people make in troubleshooting foaming issues it to assume their temperature is OK. If you don’t have a thermometer in your glass of beer, then you have not ruled out temperature as an issue! Next, look at restriction. If you are using a direct draw system (99.9% of home users are), then you need at least 5’ of 3/16” beer line or flow control. Next, make sure your beer is not drastically over carbonated.
Other issues?
Other issues are not very common but can occasionally raise their big ugly foamy head. Be careful not to jump to these too fast. They are rare and usually when someone thinks it is one of these causes, it is actually one of the main three.
Obstruction – Sometimes the line can have some sort of obstruction that is causing extreme turbulence and in turn foam. Here are some examples I have seen:
Dip tube in homebrew keg pushing hard on bottom or side…or obstruction in dip tube like hops, grains, dirt etc. If you eliminate the obstruction you will eliminate the foam.
Obstruction in hose, faucet, shank, or some other component. This could be machining burr or any other foreign object.
Hose is too high and collecting CO2. This can be a difficult one. Sometimes, when you don’t pour a beer for awhile, the hose will collect CO2. In a tower system or shank system, this will happen but not cause much foam. However, if the hose is in a large loop upwards it can collect a lot of CO2 and will “burp” out a large amount of foam at the beginning of the pour. This is severely aggravated by too high of a temperature and/or over carbonation. If fact, this condition is usually just a symptom of one of the big three.
Gas leak in component. This is when you have a gas leak that is letting outside air in your line. This could be a loose nut or clamp. It can cause a lot of foaming if the leak is severe.
I am probably missing some “other issues” and I will continue to update this section as they come up in my trouble shooting. If you discover any “other issues”, I would love to hear about it and put it in this article.
Remember – when you have a gas leak, look at the three main issues first: temperature, restriction, and carbonation level. Then, explore the more obscure causes. If you still can’t figure it out, I invite you to email me and reference this article. My email is [email protected]. Thank you and happy homebrewing!
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our homebrew podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the podcast where we answer YOUR homebrew questions and we discuss all things related to craft beer!
With Easter coming soon (as in, a day or two from when we’re publishing this!), we hope you have a wonderfully relaxing weekend with your friends and/or family or even by yourself! I know that, for me personally, I’m super excited because my Dad and I will be sharing our first all-grain recipe we brewed together with our extended family at our Easter gathering. My family loves IPAs (what’s wrong with them, amirite?) so I’m hoping that they’ll love the one we brewed. I think it turned out great but you can probably relate to me in that I think EVERYTHING I do turns out great. I’m just |a little| narcissistic… that’s all! 😉
On Today’s Show:
Todd (Kegconnection) recently received an email from a listener and customer who has been having some foaming issues on one of their kegs, even after switching to CMB flow control faucets. This got Todd thinking and so we take the question and also elaborate on the most common issues that draft systems face specifically in regards to controlling foam and maintaining a proper pour for your beer. Of course, we also have James (CMBecker) and on the show since it’s always his faucets we recommend as solutions so he brings some valuable insight into the world of flow control solutions. As usual, I’m just here to facilitate. 🙂
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor! Easy-peasy, right?
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our homebrew podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the podcast where we answer YOUR homebrew questions and we discuss all things related to craft beer!
I love this time of the year. The weather is reasonably pleasant (i.e – not too hot or too cold for comfortable outside brewing!), the flowers are blooming, and it’s the beginning of tradeshow season for the craft beer and homebrewing industries! As you already know, we’ll be in beautiful Providence, Rhode Island, at the end of June and we really do hope to see you there. This week is also a big week for the industry as it’s the annual Craft Brewers Conference in Denver, CO, which is where Todd happens to be right now!
On Today’s Show:
Todd (Kegconnection) calls in from Denver, Colorado to give James (CMBecker) and myself a recap of what he experienced during the Craft Brewers Conference. It’s hard work he does for our show but somebody has to do it… Also, James and I take YOUR questions on homebrew shelf life when your beer is kegged, and we also discuss what we do when we want to use specific ingredients but might have to substitute due to limited availability. We had a blast recording this week’s episode and hope you enjoy it as well.
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor! Easy-peasy, right?
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the show where we answer YOUR questions about homebrewing and commercial craft beer. You may have noticed that we released TWO “episodes” this week. OK, the first one really shouldn’t count because it was an abomination and awful attempt at providing some April Fool’s day content… but… BUT, some positive feedback I did get from that was that the fake ad bumper we produced might actually work if we ever wanted to use it for real. So, there’s that.
On Today’s Show:
On to things that actually matter! Todd (President and Chief Keg Washer at Kegconnection) and James (Director of Operations at CMBecker and overall handsome man) join me today for the 127th episode of our podcast. We take a question from a listener who has been asked to provide the beer for an event coming up and he’s wondering what’s the best way he can transport the beer to the event with minimal adversity. We also take a question from someone who is done bottling and is ready to keg (brilliant choice, if you ask us). She’s wanting to dispense the beer through a kegerator/keezer and we talk about the various ways she can achieve that.
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep.
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast –
In honor of us still being a show and taking over 3 years to produce 126 episodes (a weekly show, mind you… don’t do the math on how long we went where we didn’t make any new episodes…), we decided to treat you to a little behind the scenes sneak peek. In this special episode, we’re sharing with you some of our ideas from the past that we never felt comfortable implementing, format changes we ALMOST made, and a look at our potential future as we aim to monetize the bejeezus out of this show! We hope you enjoy this April 1st special edition episode of our podcast 🙂
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep.
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the show where we answer YOUR questions about homebrewing and commercial craft beer. It’s, easily, my favorite thing to do every week and I can’t genuinely thank you all enough for supporting our show and tuning in each and every week. This week is especially awesome because…
On Today’s Show:
TODD IS BACK! Woohoo! Todd Burns (President and Chief Keg Washer at Kegconnection) joins myself and Ladik Joe Ermis (Dir. of Operations at Homebrew Supply) to bring you our 126th episode of our show. This week, we enjoyed a wonderful evening of beer tastings (also known as research and development *wink* *wink*) that we recap at the top of the show. Then, we take a question about making clone recipes and some thoughts behind what goes in to creating accurate clone recipes. We had an absolute BLAST this week and I’m, personally, excited to present this to you.
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep.
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! This is the show where we answer YOUR questions about homebrewing and commercial craft beer. When we aren’t doing Q&A episodes, we try to find fellow homebrewers, industry professionals, or really anyone that’ll do 30’ish minutes with me on the phone 😉
On Today’s Show:
Fan favorite, Ladik Joe Ermis joins me once again for this week’s episode. I know I’ve said this a million times but I’m super grateful for my peers, like Joe, who are so willing to come on the show on short notice and help me answer your questions. Joe is also known as the IPA guy around here and he’s the man behind the recipe that my dad and I brewed for our first all-grain brew day so I was glad to update him on the success of how that beer turned out!
We want to hear from you!
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep.
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.
Hey hey hey, it’s another episode of the Homebrew Happy Hour!
– We welcome and thank you for tuning in to our podcast –
Thank you for joining us once again for the Homebrew Happy Hour show! I’d like to start this week’s show, again, by THANKING you all for the tremendous amount of love you’ve sent Todd’s way. Our email inbox, Facebook inbox, Instagram inbox, and YouTube comments have been full of your support and words of encouragement and condolences for Todd and Liz regarding the recent loss of their son and we all thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You guys are truly the best community we could ever ask for and we can’t thank you enough for that.
On Today’s Show
James Carlson from CMBecker International joins me to take your questions on this week’s show. Specifically, we’re talking about how a homebrewer can increase the frequency of their brew days (or the amount of beers they brew every month) and we also field a question about sanitation. James is the perfect person for these questions because 1) He brews all the time AND he is a stickler for sanitation and 2) because he knows way more than I do about every topic so, obviously, he’s the perfect person for me to ask these questions to. 🙂
We want to hear from you
As always, If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep.
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
Today’s show is brought to you by Kegconnection.com! Check out Kegconnection’s brand new “Brewer’s Club Rewards” program which gives you points for every purchase and the ability to earn FREE points simply by sharing content or participating in various activities. You can redeem your points for discounts on future orders, FREE SHIPPING, FREE GIFTS, and a whole lot more so go to Kegconnection.com for more information. Homebrew Happy Hour listeners who shop at Kegconnection.com can use the promo code “HHH” to receive 5% off your order.