Crafty Pale: All-in-one brew.

This brew was an experiment to ferment and serve from a Corny keg. This really came about through necessity because I just didn’t have any fermentation vessels left.

There are of course pro & cons of doing so.  Problems include off flavours from yeast autolysis  leaving beer on the yeast cake for weeks. Also dry hopping also can lead to vegetable flavours. I would never have considered doing this if it wasn’t for the success I’ve had with the ball float dispenser. Taking beer from the top of a keg rather than the bottom really does make a lot of sense.

The biggest advantage of keeping the beer in the fermenter is the elimination of oxygen. Especially with high hop content beers, transferring beer between vessels,  it is very difficult to avoid oxygen ingress and it’s detrimental impact on these beers.

The single vessel also simplifies the whole process. I simply put the keg in my beer fridge/fermenter and dialled in 19°C.  Then post fermentation, the temperature was reduced to 5°C for few days and served!

Recipe wise, this was also an experiment with some new local grown  pale malt called Laureate. Not only was this malt local, it also is unique in that it is malted at Crafty Malsters.  Farmer & Maltster all in one. How cool is that!

Result

This was probably the clearest beer I’ve made. It clarified really quickly. I don’t know if that was due to low protein content of the malt or the ball float dispenser.

Taste wise, I could not detect any off flavours either due to sitting on the yeast or the extended contact time with the dry hops. I didn’t have any problems fermenting and serving from the same keg. This is something I’ll be doing again.