Hand Pull/Beer Engine Setup

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R-J-M

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Good afternoon fellow brewers!

So I have just got my hands on a used Angram Hand Pull and would love to get this set up in the garden bar!

I brew ale, lager and cider all from kits at the moment, and just bottle each brew. I have never stored brews in a keg, barrels etc before.

So, what is my best option for setting up the hand pull? Bag in a box? Corny Keg etc?

Ideally I want a setup which would allow me to pull pints of flat ales, fizzy lagers and fizzy ciders at BBQ's.

any images & parts list would be very useful please :)
 
Hi!
beer engines work pull the beer up by suction rather than pressurised gas pushing it up.
A lot of homebrewers that use beer engines favour bag-in-a-box systems as they collapse around the beer as it is dispensed, leaving no headspace for oxidation.
You'll get away with ales and bitters, but I don't think fizzy lagers and ciders are suited to being served by hand-pull.
 
So a hand pull would work with a BIAB on still ales, but I would need a corny keg and little tap for fizzy stuff?
 
Hi!
Just to clarify - BIAB is homebrewing shorthand for Brew in a Bag.
I'm intrigued to read about "still ales". What are these?

Ah, didn't realise it had a double abbreviation! I was thinking Bag in a Box, not Brew in a Bag haha

You can buy clear 20L bags with taps on for £1.50 and a reusable box for £1.80. Then once 2nd fermentation has finished, I was going to rack it into a bag and hook the pump up using a Vitop connector and hose.
 
Ah, didn't realise it had a double abbreviation! I was thinking Bag in a Box, not Brew in a Bag haha

You can buy clear 20L bags with taps on for ��£1.50 and a reusable box for ��£1.80. Then once 2nd fermentation has finished, I was going to rack it into a bag and hook the pump up using a Vitop connector and hose.

i think a polypin bag for beer to beer engine is what your after. the cheep bags imo are not strong enough. the polypin bags are thicker than the cheap bags and can be reused many times.

this pic was on google when i looked for an example
 
Hi!
By "secondary fermentation" do you mean adding priming sugar to carbonate the beer?

Yes that's correct. You need 1 teaspoon of brewing sugar for fizzy lager, ciders etc and just half a teaspoon for ales. Add this to each bottle when bottling, leave somewhere warm for 1 - 2 weeks and this will carbonate the drink.
 
I've only really scanned this thread and the OP so am not 100% of what the OP's question is but @dads_ale has a really nice beer engine/home bar set up so may be able to answer whatever the question is
 
I've only really scanned this thread and the OP so am not 100% of what the OP's question is but @dads_ale has a really nice beer engine/home bar set up so may be able to answer whatever the question is

Will put up some info later when I have a bit more time as have my set working well at the moment.
 
A couple of years ago I embarked on a similar project of producing a British hand-pulled beer style. Ironically this didn't lead to a simple system with no CO2 but to a system that manages CO2 very, very, carefully!

The write-up was taken elsewhere for a more critical review (everyone was being far too nice here). But attached is the nearly complete article. No "how-to", that needs a bit more tweaking yet. It covers hand-pumps at the end (including "Dads-Ale's" - a fellow forum basher on this site - approach of using an "intermediary" with the pump).

It's more information than you'll have dreamed of collected from here - it's why I wrote it to try and save some others going through the same hunt for information. It's a big read. Hope you enjoy it, I'm posting it here to try and sound out responses before making it more widely accessible.

(I've got my coat ready in case of any egg-sucking instruction coming my way).



Oops, my file is way too big for this site. I'll see what I can do about it. Meanwhile, have one of the illustrations...

Conditioning Hand-pump.jpg
 
A few notes on my experience with a beer engine.

First check you beer engine for leaks by pulling through some water from a bucket. You may need to replace some seals or the entire cylinder assembly (I had to :-()

Bag in a Box.
This looked promising but ultimately failed. These actually have two layers with the inner being gas permeable. If using for secondary fermentation the co2 gets between the layers and you cannot vent any excess pressure. They would probably work if filling with bright beer but I found you had to drink it within a couple of days before it went flat.
You would also need a check valve to prevent beer leaking through the engine under pressure.

Corny keg
Only tried once and it didn't work that well as the beer was already carbonated for keg dispense so caused a lot of frothing. May try again with a lower carbed beer but you need to have a very low pressure CO2 supply (i.e. cask breather set up) to prevent the engine pulling a vacuum plus will probably need a check valve. May also have problems with the lid sealing at low pressure.

Pressure barrel
This is my current set up. I use 12ltre PBs with the lids converted to take a pressure gauge and a CO2 inlet. The taps are also replaced with JG fitting but this bit may be overkill.
I secondary ferment in the PBs, venting to keep pressure at around 10 PSI. Once secondary fermentation is finished I leave for a couple of weeks (or longer) they are ready. Vent excess pressure and connect CO2 to the lid via a cask breather. Connect directly to the beer engine, no need for a check valve as long as the PB is below the height of the beer engine, and pour away.
With this set up the beer lasted in very good condition for 8 days, might have gone longer but I drank it all :grin:
Using the smaller PBs mean you don't have to rush to drink 5 gallons in a shortish time period.
I'll try and take some picture tomorrow.

Still to try one of the thicker polypins and need to sort some form of cooling.
 
How did you do that only I have a guide on simple AG that I would like to post but it is also oversize.
1.Get yourself a free 5GB Google drive (https://www.google.com/drive/).
2.Create a folder from which to share (optional, but its nice to have just one or two locations containing shared files only).
3.Copy target file to this folder (you are actually copying it to a local folder that get synchronised with your Google drive).
4.Right click target file (Web based drive view, or local Google drive folder) and select "Share..."
5.Share with "Anyone with the link can view", copy the link and publish (or choose any of the other suitable share options).

Jolly innit.


(Edited for typos. I should also say you don't have to use Google drive - I'm sure some of the alternative "cloud" drives, like OneDrive etc., will work too).
 
I have been using a hand pump with a polypin, the same as in earlier photo, for years. As close to a pub real ale as you get unless you go down the cask and cask breather route. Bag in a box does not work as well. You need to drink within 2 weeks.
 
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