Craft Beer Festivals

A look at the new wave of beer festivals I've enjoyed this year.



Craft Beer Festivals from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.

Kegs Without Extraneous CO2

We quite like KeyKegs. We wish they cost a little less, or at least that we could find a more cost effective way of getting them transported from Germany. But still, the bag-in-a-ball type of thing is handy and the non-returnable nature cuts costs in other areas.

We can put the beer into KeyKeg with minimal filtering, after carbonating by secondary fermentation in our tanks. It's difficult to find a reason, from this brewers point of view, why the beer in KeyKegs is any different from that in cask. The only disadvantage I can see is that it is difficult to vent off a KeyKeg if the beer is more fizzy than desired¹.

In just about 2 weeks from today we'll be pitching up at Leeds to serve beer from KeyKeg. I hope, if I get it all sorted, I may, just for the novelty, seve some of it through handpull.

Meanwhile, here is Jules and I messing around with various human powered compressed air generators.


KeyKeg dispense using foot-pump from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.


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¹However, it is not impossible to reduce carbonation levels by venting. I'm planning a tutorial video on dealing with Craft Keg when it gets too carbonated.