Friday, January 29, 2016

Decided to up my game a bit

In preparation for getting into rum brewing, I have decided that I had better up my game a bit in the storage department.

5 litre flagons are good for general handling and oaking, but you need a lot of them, and they are not cheap.  They also make blending difficult.

I've experimented with the 15 and 23 litre glass carboys but they are very expensive, and there's just something about putting that much product into one glass container that doesn't sit well with me.  They're also difficult to seal effectively, as you can't get the swingtop caps (no little holes for the wires), and the one time I tried corking one solid the pressure differential on the first warm day shot the cork across the room with more verve than I have any intention of encouraging further.

Wooden barrels of any size make glass look cheap, and I don't know I would trust any but the best ones re leakage.

So given you can only keep the stuff in glass, timber, earthenware (yeah right) or stainless steel, I did what had to be done and bought a keg.

The "small" bottle on the left is 5 litres, the big fella with the siphon in it is 23 litres.  The keg is 50 litres.  The skateboard is from Masters so I don't shear a pin moving the thing.

Sanitising kegs takes some commitment.  With fermenters you just chuck in some sanitiser solution, half a jug of warm water, and shake.  The process is much the same with the keg, but you need to be Gregor Clegane to do it.

Anyway, I just sealed it up with about 1/2" of air space and it's off to live in the cupboard for a couple of years, and we'll see what she tastes like then.  In the meantime, let the rum begin (or at least we will when the useless feed store gets my 20 litre drum of molasses in, which they were supposed to have here three days ago).


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