At Cheshire Peaks we put most of our beer into barrels. Well actually they are plastic kegs with a pressure valve on the top. My preferred type is a King Keg.
Recently however we were asked to brew a barrel of beer for a friend’s 40th birthday party. I knew I had to ship it over to her house on the day of the party and I was concerned about the unwieldy nature of a barrel. So I got a Polypin from my local homebrew store. Polypins are basically a large strong polythene bag with a tap that fits inside a special cardboard box. You can buy beer from local breweries in polypins these days if you need a large amount for a party.
When I serve beer from a barrel through the beer engine we eventually build up a vacuum over the beer because I don’t allow air in through the cap into the barrel. Every now and then I have to inject some carbon dioxide from a cylinder to replace the consumed beer, or the beer refuses to come out! Carbon dioxide keeps the beer from going stale.
The beauty of a polypin is that it just collapses as the beer is drawn out by the beer engine. So it allowed me to set up the polypin and beer engine before the party and basically leave it alone all night. I could have used a barrel and just allowed air in by opening the cap, but that would have meant that if any beer was left over it would stale very quickly.
Below are a few photos of the polypin. The first two are how it is now, full of cleaner and ready for re-use. The last two are how it looked after the last bit of beer had been drawn out – totally sucked in.
