Brewing Master

Question:

: RE:  St. Patrick’s Kegs  (A melancholy saga of WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!) :      Last night I kegged for the first time…(remember, you never : forget your first time; I was gentle, yet excited!)… after waiting : a LOOOONNNNGGGGGG time for my three kegs to arrive via UPS.  They : were $33 for three and in pretty good shape (one of the pressure : relief valves was cracked inside, but at least so far it doesn’t : seem to effect pressure holding capability.  Shipping was ca $11.50 :      New gaskets for all of them were $9.00 ($3 per set) and : unfortunately, whoever made up the set wasn’t paying much attention; : I got one too may of the small o-ring, and one too few of the dip : tube o-ring; oh well too much to ask I guess. :      If you’re thinking of ordering any kegs, you better do it : NOW!!!   I waited about 2 MONTHS from the time I ordered them until : they appeared on my doorstep!  My original order was placed 27 : April; I was told they were out of kegs until 15 May; After about a : week I called and they told me their supplier had delayed getting : the kegs to them.  I can empathize with backorders, etc., but by : early June I was getting concerned.  I called the week of 6 June, it : hadn’t been shipped yet.  Wait another week.  I called on Tuesday : the 14th.  I was told it had been shipped on the 10th (?).  I’ve : gotten UPS orders from either coast within 4-5 business days, so I : guessed I should’ve  gotten them sometime during the week of the : 13th.  NOPE!  They didn’t show up on Monday the 20th, nor on the : 21st.  FINALLY, they appeared on the 22nd, just shy of two months : since placing the order!! :      The condition they~ arrived in was, I guess, OK.  I was told : that they would be taped together, and that the receipt and o-ring : sets would be in one of the kegs that had been washed out.  Well, : when I popped open the ring-containing keg, it had about 250 ml of : warm pepsi syrup coating the rings, saturating the receipt and : charge slip, and a multi-page St. Pat’s homebrewing catalog.  What a : mess!  The catalog was dripping, my new o-rings were wet with cola : syrup (just why we want to replace them!), and the zip-lock plastic : bag supposedly containing all of this in-keg stuff was open and : coated with syrup.  I wasn’t pleased. :      After some initial cleanup with water, I took the kegs into my : shop, and used mineral spirits to remove most of the sticky mess the : tape left on the outside of the kegs.  I also used a non-metal : abrasive pad to try to  remove some of the external blemishes on the : stainless parts of the keg.  I also used a putty knife to remove : accumulated crud on the rubber boot(s) [seemed to be like chewing : gum consistency], and managed to get them looking pretty good with : some effort and elbow grease.  I replaced the o-rings, cleaned out : the input/output valves, diptubes, and lid.  Finally beer time! :      After a 10 minute soak in warm Iodophor and a run through the : lines with CO2, I FINALLY racked my pale ale (in the secondary : nearly three weeks waiting for the kegs to get here!) into #1 corny, : and added 1.5 oz. East Kent Goldings plugs in a hop bag.  Sealed, : pressured, prayed for no problems. :      I can’t make up my mind if it was worth the unduly long wait. : I was told that they had over 1,000 kegs to ship; somehow if the : merchant agrees to take the order, in my opinion how many kegs they : must ship should have no bearing on delivery of merchandise in a : timely fashion.  I agreed to SOME of this delay, but certainly had : hoped to get them long before I did.  Just some data for those of : you considering taking the kegging plunge.  Patience is a virtue, : and above all, ^Caveat Emptor^! : Good Brewing!

Response:

 U I’ve not only never had a bad experience with St. Pats, I’ve  U been happier with them than other mail order shops and even  U my local homebrew supply shop. I would like to second this.  They seem the best mail order shop I have dealt with in total value.  Even getting carboys from them mail order was a pleasant experience. John Fidonet:  John DeCarlo 1:109/131

Response:

Lynne O’Conner has always been helpful, pleasant, and reasonable when I’ve spoken with her.  If you call or e-mail St. Pats and ask to speak with Lynne, I bet you’ll get real answers to your questions and concerns about these keg orders.

    Well, they haven’t answered my email in 7 weeks. It’s been more than 2 months since I ordered my kegs, and still going, and going, and going.     To be fair, she did promptly answer a few questions I had before I ordered the kegs. For the other poster, the email address is Good Luck! Jim Bailar                                 voice : (301)-227-1450 Propulsor Technology Branch (5440)         fax   : (301)-227-5764 David Taylor Model Basin Bethesda, MD

Response:

: Lynne O’Conner has always been helpful, pleasant, and reasonable when I’ve : spoken with her.  If you call or e-mail St. Pats and ask to speak with Lynne, : I bet you’ll get real answers to your questions and concerns about these keg : orders. No argument there – always helpful, pleasant, and reasonable – but I still don’t have any functional kegs 2 months after my credit card was charged.  You say they have e-mail – could you be so kind as to post the address so I can save on long distance phone calls? THANX!

Response:

I’ve not only never had a bad experience with St. Pats, I’ve been happier with them than other mail order shops and even my local homebrew supply shop.  So these complaints surprise me, but, I guess everyone has a bad day once in a while (still, 90 consecutive bad days is pretty terrible).  Perhaps the problem is just unique to this batch of kegs. Lynne O’Conner has always been helpful, pleasant, and reasonable when I’ve spoken with her.  If you call or e-mail St. Pats and ask to speak with Lynne, I bet you’ll get real answers to your questions and concerns about these keg orders. Best of luck! -wynn

Response:

I have ordered nine kegs from St. Pat’s.  The first three back when they had them in stock (probably February or March) and was told they would ship by the end of the week.  I had the kegs within two weeks.  I ordered the other six a couple weeks later, but by then they had run out of their first load of ball lock kegs and said it would be sometime in the middle of May that they would get more in stock.  I got them by the end of May. My guess is that they got so many orders between the time that they ran out of their original stock and the time they got in new stock that catching up was a long confusing process. — –Tim McNerney –Loral Western Development Labs –(408) 473-4748

Response:

RE:  St. Patrick’s Kegs  (A melancholy saga of WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!)

I have been having a similar problem with getting the kegs from St. Pats. I’ve been waiting since May 19th for mine and they still aren’t here. I’ve been calling every tue for 6 weeks now.  Most of the time I’ve bee told the keegs would ship by the end of the week.  Twice I’ve been told they had already shipped only to be told the next week they had not shipped. This time they told me thay had canceld my order!  I had ordered capper at the same time as the kegs but had to cancel it ’cause they didn’t ship it separate from the kegs.  If I wanted to cancel the order, why am I calling every week. I’m still waiting and will post a meesage when (if) they ever get here. St. Pat’s may be a good deal, but don’t order if you need them any time soon. -markr

Response:

HOMEBREW Digest #1458                        Fri 24 June 1994         FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES                 Rob Gardner, Digest Janitor Contents:   saccharine/ fruit beer ("Dana S. Cummings")   hangovers, forced carbonation (Bob Fawcett)   Really Dry Beer! (John Hartman)   33 Quarts? (Steve Scampini)   Making a fruit beer ( LARRY KELLY)   Re: altbier yeasts (Jeff Frane)   Head space, filters, er, uh, mills (Jack Schmidling)   NDN: Homebrew Digest #1450 (June 15, 1994) (Gateway)   Primary vs. Secondary (Sweetcorn Muncher)   Re: Shaking kegs & carbonation (Jeff Benjamin)   laws and kegs? (Jason Sloan)   Re: Misc (Jim Busch)   Pot Watcher substitute (Jason Sloan)   All-Grain Videos/MeMakeMead? (Doug Trainor)   Lautertun Dead Space (Terri Terfinko)   Heineken rolls with the changes (Todd Jennings)   Re: BEER FESTIVAL LISTING? ("Todd R. Reavis")   Chiller and ice water (Dion Hollenbeck)   HANGOVER (David S Calonico)   old malt (ANDY WALSH)   DeClerck’s Textbook of Brewing (Glenn Raudins)   More about lager yeast …. (Aidan "Krausen Kropping Kiwi" Heerdegen)   Lagers/dry-hopping/yeastiebeasties (Aidan "Krausen Kropping Kiwi" Heerdegen)   German Wheat Ale,er Lager (DBLAKE1037)   needs colder refrigerator (Rob Skinner)   Frustratingly Flat brown ale. (Erik Speckman)   Altbier, etc. (Derek Bowen)   Dusseldorf Altbier (Jon Petty)   Re: Counterflow Chiller extras (Mike Zentner)    (WIRESULTS)   St. Patricks of Texas kegs (wrighda)   B complex vitamins (Ed Ditto)   Dry and liquid extracts (Patrick Weix)   Wild Goose amber beer: recipe search (Peter Nigra)   portland brew-pubs? (Jim Doyle)   Cutting Kegs (rnarvaez)   water storage and immersing brewpots (tfirey)   (Articles are published in the order they are received.) Send UNSUBSCRIBE and all other requests, ie, address change, etc.,   then you MUST unsubscribe the same way! If your account is being deleted, please be courteous and unsubscribe first. FAQs, archives and other files are available via anonymous ftp from   sierra.stanford.edu. (Those without ftp access may retrieve files via   message to that address to receive listserver instructions.) Please don’t send me requests for back issues – you will be silently ignored. Any comments on the saccharine??  Is there an alternative method (like adding lactose, or something…) that I could substitute for the saccharine??

I made a brown ale that called for malto dextrin for residual sweetness and body.  I think Papazian has some info on the use of malto-dextrin or perhaps someone more experienced can help you out.     And now for something completely different:         I recently made a fruit beer and wanted to report my experiences and ask some questions.           Background:  Last summer I made a raspberry ale by adding 5# of frozen raspb’s to the kettle after the heat was off.  Fine beer, nice and clear but really lacked the raspb aroma and flavor I wanted.  So this year I decided to add them to the secondary.           Boiled my wort etc let the belgian ale yeast go ’til it slowed down some.  I went to get frozen raspb’s at the local club place and they were out!!!  So I used the pound and a half I had in the freezer and supplemented with 3# strawb’s.   To kill any nasties that survived the freezer I put the fruit in a pot and   brought it just  to a boiling temp and then cooled quickly in an ice bath.  I added the fruit to the secondary and what an eventful 4-5 hours.  The raspb’s sank immediately but the strawb’s floated up to the too small head space.  I soon learned that strawb’s are a close approximation of a sponge.           So they floated, swelled up, got pushed into the blow off tube which they promptly and regularly plugged.  I spent the next several hours pulling the tube/plug assembly out, clearing the hose, fishing strawb’s out of the carboy neck ( w/ my fingers ) and wiping strawb’s off the wall.  After what I feared was a now contaminated batch calmed down it took a looong time to ferment the sugar contributed by the fruit.           I bottled hoping for the best.  It’s young yet but doesn’t seem to have any off flavors.  Next time I’ll leave plenty of headspace so the fruit stays in the beer instead of going into  the blow off.  The beer is incredibly cloudy.  I suspect that I activated the pectin by heating the fruit.           So here’s some questions for you h-brew guru’s:         *Should I just use pectin enzyme?            If so when is it appropriate to add it?  W/ fruit I assume.         *Is it unnecessary to heat commercially frozen fruit?         *If I tried to sulfite the fruit would I encounter side affects? Many thanks in advance and I hope this is useful to some would be fruity brewers.   Cheers and Beers Dana Cummings My ex-wife used to work with recovering alcoholics (she was a nurse) and the magic hangover cure was a large glass of gatoraid with a teaspoonful of honey added.  If you had a real headache a dramamine tablet along with above. I have been kegging only a few weeks.  The first couple I used the high pressure shake method.  After seeing all the recent posts on problems with this method I would like to try the slow method and compare.  How long does it take to carbonate if you add 30psi CO2 and wait? Bob Fawcett Read an interesting article in the newspaper last night.  It was from one of the wire services but I forget which one. Summarizing the article, it seems a brewery in Czechoslovakia has developed powdered beer.  I kid you not.  The article didn’t say what exactly was meant by powdered beer, but that in 10 days the beer is ready to drink. The purpose behind all this is marketing to the former Soviet Union countries.  When communism fell, new markets were opened.  But because transportation and other costs were so high, shipping Czech brew to those countries was cost prohibitive.  Powdered beer alleviates much of that cost. The developer of the stuff says that it tastes pretty good.  Well of course, what else would he say? What would Ilkka have to say about this?  ;-)  -jh John Hartman                  AFS: jhartman+ Dept 54T/020-3 J221           VM: jhartman at rchland (if you must IBM Rochester, MN             (507)253-8037 tl. 553-8037 Thanks for info on scorching – I suspect I was not turning the flame off when I added the extract and thereby toasting the malt. On another note, I recently measured my "33 quart" enamel brewpot… 15.5 inches in diameter and 10 inches deep.  Basically, a simple truncated cylinder.  Based on the conversion factor of cubic feet to US gallons, I keep coming up with more like 7.15 gallons rather than 8.25 gallons.  Am I blowing what is an incredibly simple calculation or is this like buying a Two by Four stud and finding it to be 1.5 X 3.5 inches?   Steve Scampini Well I asked if any of you had a recipe for a Fruit beer, namely a Strawberry or Apple one and o one replied to me.  Well i’m thinking about trying to design one myself, but I have a few questions.  I have never designed a recipe before. I want to make an Ale, light to medium in color (not dark or stouty looking) Should wheat malt be used? Should I crush or puree the fruits? (ie. make an apple sauce out of the apples) HOw much fruit should be used? (I want the drinker to be able to recognize that there is fruit in the brew) 4-5 gallon batch of beer will be made Basically I’m asking if anyone can throw my way any input he/she should have in designing a recipe of this type.   What types of grains should I use? Munichs, Pale Malts, Crystals…etc..etc.  I prefer to use and All Grain type recipe instead of using extracts. Thanx in advance, Larry Jeff, any info on the source of the "Alt" strain sold by Wyeast?? (I have private email that this strain floccs quite well).

Actually, Wyeast doesn’t have an "Alt" strain, per se.  They have 1007 "German ale yeast", which is pretty fluffy (flocculation is low) and 1338 "European ale yeast", which is a high flocculator.  Question is, which is the "alt" strain (and a source of some debate in a certain forum)?  To the best of my knowledge — and I will double-check this — neither of these strains was specifically from a Dusseldorf source.  I know that the strain Widmer uses (which, I am certain, originated with Zum Uerige) is quite fluffy, but it *does* flocculate to some extent. Wyeast also has a "kolsch" strain, which is described as a low flocculator. I would venture to suggest that some of the poor floccing strains might perform a little differently in the bottle than in a large vessel. When I speak to Dave again (needs to be … read more »

Response:

RE:  St. Patrick’s Kegs  (A melancholy saga of WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!)      Last night I kegged for the first time…(remember, you never forget your first time; I was gentle, yet excited!)… after waiting a LOOOONNNNGGGGGG time for my three kegs to arrive via UPS.  They were $33 for three and in pretty good shape (one of the pressure relief valves was cracked inside, but at least so far it doesn’t seem to effect pressure holding capability.  Shipping was ca $11.50      New gaskets for all of them were $9.00 ($3 per set) and unfortunately, whoever made up the set wasn’t paying much attention; I got one too may of the small o-ring, and one too few of the dip tube o-ring; oh well too much to ask I guess.      If you’re thinking of ordering any kegs, you better do it NOW!!!   I waited about 2 MONTHS from the time I ordered them until they appeared on my doorstep!  My original order was placed 27 April; I was told they were out of kegs until 15 May; After about a week I called and they told me their supplier had delayed getting the kegs to them.  I can empathize with backorders, etc., but by early June I was getting concerned.  I called the week of 6 June, it hadn’t been shipped yet.  Wait another week.  I called on Tuesday the 14th.  I was told it had been shipped on the 10th (?).  I’ve gotten UPS orders from either coast within 4-5 business days, so I guessed I should’ve  gotten them sometime during the week of the 13th.  NOPE!  They didn’t show up on Monday the 20th, nor on the 21st.  FINALLY, they appeared on the 22nd, just shy of two months since placing the order!!      The condition they~ arrived in was, I guess, OK.  I was told that they would be taped together, and that the receipt and o-ring sets would be in one of the kegs that had been washed out.  Well, when I popped open the ring-containing keg, it had about 250 ml of warm pepsi syrup coating the rings, saturating the receipt and charge slip, and a multi-page St. Pat’s homebrewing catalog.  What a mess!  The catalog was dripping, my new o-rings were wet with cola syrup (just why we want to replace them!), and the zip-lock plastic bag supposedly containing all of this in-keg stuff was open and coated with syrup.  I wasn’t pleased.      After some initial cleanup with water, I took the kegs into my shop, and used mineral spirits to remove most of the sticky mess the tape left on the outside of the kegs.  I also used a non-metal abrasive pad to try to  remove some of the external blemishes on the stainless parts of the keg.  I also used a putty knife to remove accumulated crud on the rubber boot(s) [seemed to be like chewing gum consistency], and managed to get them looking pretty good with some effort and elbow grease.  I replaced the o-rings, cleaned out the input/output valves, diptubes, and lid.  Finally beer time!      After a 10 minute soak in warm Iodophor and a run through the lines with CO2, I FINALLY racked my pale ale (in the secondary nearly three weeks waiting for the kegs to get here!) into #1 corny, and added 1.5 oz. East Kent Goldings plugs in a hop bag.  Sealed, pressured, prayed for no problems.      I can’t make up my mind if it was worth the unduly long wait. I was told that they had over 1,000 kegs to ship; somehow if the merchant agrees to take the order, in my opinion how many kegs they must ship should have no bearing on delivery of merchandise in a timely fashion.  I agreed to SOME of this delay, but certainly had hoped to get them long before I did.  Just some data for those of you considering taking the kegging plunge.  Patience is a virtue, and above all, ^Caveat Emptor^! Good Brewing!

Response:

I saw an ad in Zymurgy about used 5-gallon kegs at St. Patricks of Texas Is anyone familiar with the kegs they sell?  Are they in good condition?  It seems like a steal at 3 for $33, even with shipping.  Thanks for any inf

. Dave Wright

I got 3 kegs and o-rings shipped to St. Louis for about $50.  The kegs were in good shape.  They came taped together (no box). Keith B.

Response: