Spraymalt

Hi everyone

I'm new to the forum and i am amazed at the new world that has opened up to me!! I have a couple of questions im hoping someone can help me with. Firstly in doing a bit of research i came across a post mentioning spraymalt, can anyone shed some light on this stuff? Is it better than using granulated sugar or brewing sugar? I have seen the Muntons spraymalt for sale on ebay, any good?

Do i use sugar/spraymalt and then at the end use carbonation drops or is it one or the other?

Secondly is it best to siphon the beer from the bucket into a keg or directly into the bottle? Can anyone recommend a good keg? I have seen a few on eBay but i don't want to buy a bad quality one only to have to buy another in the future.

Thank you in advance for any help guys im sure i will look back at this post in a few years and laugh at my naivety!!

Spraymalt is DME (dried malt extract). You would normally use it as part of your fermentables in your beer, it will be better than using sugar. You can also use it to carbonate your beer as well, but most people will just use dextrose (corn sugar), or the carbonation drops.

If you want to keg your beer, you can siphon right from primary into the keg, I do this all the time. If you want to bottle, you would probably want a bottling bucket. You would add your priming sugar solution into the bottling bucket (water and dextrose mixture), then rack the beer on top to mix the priming sugar well. Then you would siphon the beer from the bottling bucket into the bottles. Make sure everything is cleaned and sanitized.

Thank you for taking time to reply. I seen a video on youtube and the guy added his sugar at the start of the process and then when he went onto keg the beer he added more sugar and said this gives beer its fizz.

when i come to adding sugar at the kegging process can i use sugar or carbonation drops?

Also one last thing, can you leave it in the keg for as long as you like or is there a shelf life? Whats the best method of cooling the keg? Its my first time and i dont have a temperature controlled room although if this time goes well im going to convert my shed into a mini beer factory!!

If you're kegging,you use co2 gas to pressurize the keg & carbonate the beer. No priming solution is needed in that case. Unless you're referring to those plastic kegs with spigots that seem to be popular over there. Then you use priming solution for that. But the co2 will disipate into the head space of those plastic ones as beer volume goes down. Then there's a rig that uses those small co2 cartriges to keep the head space pressurized & the beer carbonated. Hope this helps a little.

Would a -5 Gallon / 25L Pressure Barrel - Beer Keg With 8g Co2 Bulb Injection System be the kind of thing i would need? Looking at this on eBay its £44. Thanks for your help.

147dannyboy said:

Would a -5 Gallon / 25L Pressure Barrel - Beer Keg With 8g Co2 Bulb Injection System be the kind of thing i would need? Looking at this on eBay its £44. Thanks for your help.

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That's pretty common for your side of the world. But I have to tell you, on this forum unfortunately is an American forum, and pressure barrels are NOT that common to us. You may have better luck asking questions about working with them on either the English or Australian homebrewing forums. Very few if any of us even know what these things are. I know what they are because I've googled info when folks have come on here. But I have no answers to specific questions.

I don't want to chase you away , but I would post questions about pressure barrels on the Brewuk forums. We can help you with just about everything else about brewing. But specific pressure barrel info is pretty scarce on here.

However in terms of priming a pressure barrel, I would advise you to read this article, it's for priming uk pressure barrel fermenters.

Thank you Revvy, i think i am ready to go!! I will post again with results if i havent poisoned myself!!