We really want to help brewers and home bar users but beer gas has become a particular headache and we are finding ourselves less and less able to help.
We had a supply agreement with Hobbybrew which at least gave us access to gas, but at a price that made me feel like I was ripping customers off unfortunately. I wasn’t, our margins on the gas were pretty thin, but asking for £107 for a cylinder of gas just didn’t seem right. Our minimum purchase for a supply was over £2000 as well so a lot of money to be tied up in a slow moving product; a slow moving product that returned thin margins.
We’ve dropped the product sadly, but will of course honour any cylinder deposits that are owed.
This is the recipe for our Amarillo IPA. We don’t mind publishing these, there’s no ‘secret sauce’ to these recipes and part of the pleasure in brewing beer is sharing – so we are sharing all our recipes. If you brew the beer let us know, and if you want to buy a recipe kit it’s here: Amarillo IPA Recipe Kit
All of our recipe kits are designed to use a starting volume of 23lt, which should yield 18lt into the keg or bottles, and a brewhouse efficiency of 70%. This is the complete recipe, it can be scaled to suit any batch size.
Amarillo IPA Recipe
Original Gravity 1.049 Final Gravity 1.009 ABV 5.2% IBU 18.5 SRM 4.7
Fermentables:
3.5kg Maris Otter – Classic English pale ale malt
250gm Torrified Wheat – To promote head retention
250gm Malted Naked Oats – Mouthfeel / body
Hops:
Amarillo – Sweet/citrusy/tropical notes
Yeast:
Safale US05
Mash Guidelines:
Mash temp 66°C for 60 min
Boil 60 min
Hop Schedule:
10gm Amarillo at first wort or as boil starts
10gm Amarillo at 5 minutes before flameout
10gm Amarillo at flameout
10gm Amarillo dry hop – at 3 and 5 days into fermentation
Yeast Pitch:
15-20°C Ideally 18°C and fermented to final gravity – expect 5-7 days
A seriously early start for us over here at Shed Beer with this event, it was very cold and very dark while we were delivering mobile event bars for the Christmas market event in Poulton Le Fylde.
We were really pleased to be involved though and the bars looked great, and worked flawlessly, throughout. They can be testing environments for beer dispense equipment but we use the best kit available when we build these event bars and, whilst they can look a bit quirky – we like to think of them as rustic – we always have complete confidence that they will work as they should.
These ones were at separate venues. Thyme – a really nice restaurant – wanted an outside bar for the weekend and Marvin’s the funky bar down the Breck were right in the square in front of the stage.
We can configure these event bars with however many products the customer wants, two and four respectively for these ones, but if you want ten or twenty we can deliver that setup as well.
Really pleased over here at Shed Beer to be brewing at the Thatched in Poulton Le Fylde, one of the big names in cask beer on the Fylde Coast.
We started in November with a Citra that went really well but was quite a big hitter at 5.6% ABV. The Chinook we dialled down a little to 5.1% and this was much more appraochable, a really fresh tasting typical Chinook profile; piney and spicy.
The intention is to continue a single hop series so we will do a Cascade next and then an Amarillo, probably followed by a real hop bomb combining all of those hops in massive dry hop charges; something to look forward to!
So you want to put a bar in at home? Well, we’ve done loads of home bar setups so can help with that. There’s a short video here with the critical dimensions so that deals with the space issue. The key dimensions are width, depth (as in front to back) and height.
Depth wise we always think of 600mm as being about right. That’s enough to fit the cooler in with some breathing space around it and fit kegs in as well if that’s what you want. It’s convenient too if you want to use regular worktop as your bar top.
Width wise we would be thinking a bare minimum of one metre, which would accommodate the cooler and gas bottle, and one and a half metres if you want to fit a keg under there as well. We do build our own mobile units to a metre and they work just fine, we just have to put the keg separate from the bar is all.
This is our two product event bar and as can be seen from the pictures there’s enough room to fit the gas bottle, beer cooler, beer gas regulators and all the associated pipe work. With these ones we would leave the kegs outside and run cooling jackets off the recirculation pump in the cooler. We also run cold water through the python and up into the font from the same source; there’s plenty of cooling going on in this setup.
The headroom in this one is a metre, which gives us plenty of space for the gas bottle.
If you’re building a home bar then this is the exact same setup that we would use and / or recommend. You may want a single or double font rather than this triple but all of the dimensions and equipment are the same. These coolers have four cooling loops but we would only ever use two at any one time so a cooler with two loops wil be just fine for one or two products in your home bar setup; they’re just a touch smaller physically.
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
These bars are all driven by gas, there’s no need for any motors. We use 60/40 – 60% carbon dioxide (CO2) and 40% nitrogen – and find that 25psi usually does the trick. There’s lots of arguments about gas pressures and there is some very clever maths around length of pipe run and all that guff. At our level, all we need to do is understand what works and for us that’s 25psi of top pressure and no real issue going up or down by a few PSI to get the balance right.
We do use a secondary regulator per product in all our event bars and home bar setups, which some might see as a slight bit of overkill, but it does give complete control over each product and for what a secondary regulator costs it’s not really worth trying to save a few quid.
At the bottle, we need a primary regulator. If you’re tempted to use a welding regulator because you can’t see the difference or there’s one going cheap please, please, don’t. The gas in those bottles is stored at over 800psi and the beer kegs are not rated to 800psi. Regulators are not cheap, think £75 or so, but they are an absolutely critical component and not a place to try and save money.
It’s quite possible to dispense beer with CO2, we do it ourselves here in the brewshed and have seen plenty of home bar setups using CO2. Dispensing with CO2 is a great compromise if you’re a brewer and want to carbonate your beer as well. If you’re designing your home bar from scratch though mixed gas is the way to go.
We will do another post on the gas setup itself, in terms of where the pipes go etc., if you have any questions around any of this or any other aspect of your home bar setup do drop us a message; we’re always (usually!) happy to talk beer.
A short video on clarity in beer and how we achieve it over here in’t shed.
Traditionally, beer clarity was achieved using isnglass which is a fish derived product. These days we use an ethical, silica based, fining product called Brausol.
It looks like parties and events are going to be possible this year (yay!) and we’ve been busy developing our mobile bars so that we can help with these functions.
Beer Shed
Beer Shed
Beer Shed
These are our own unique Beer Sheds, stand alone units that we simply wheel into situ and plug in. We have a selection of our own beers and ciders plus access to national brewer lists so we can usually find a something to suit. These will work with beers, lagers, ciders and pretty much anything inbetween!
We generally do full weekend hire but can accommodate most needs, we have plenty of availability but that changes as the diary fills up so message us to enquire about dates and prices. Rental is usually £125 for the weekend plus whatever products you want. The only consumable is beer gas and we supply that so there are no hidden costs.
We are adding products as and when we can source them. Supplies are a little tricky at the moment but we are searching far and wide for deals. This week we’ve added sodium metabisulphite in 200gm packs.
As you will know as a brewer sodium metabisulphite is what Campden tablets are made of, it’s a water treatment that we use to drive off chlorine/chloramine but also has some real use as a cleaning/sterilising agent.
Being a chemical though, it does come with a safety datasheet and we are making this available as a download here:
