Working up to a full nitro setup...

[grv]

Hi all!

Came back to brewing at the end of last year, and I am starting to want to brew me up a nice stout...

From what I gather, one of the prevailing theories is that the tiny bubbles associated with this style have more to do with the stout faucet and restrictor plate than they do with the nitro / beer gas mix. Under this theory, the nitro / beer gas is used because the nitro does not disolve into the beer as well, so you can leave the pressure cranked up to a degree where it will be able to come out of the stout faucet. About 30# or so as compared to the maybe 8# that will produce the actual carbonation level desired in the beer.

I know that not everyone agrees about this - totally don't want to (re)start the debate I am just wondering if whether, in order to keep new equipment costs down, I could spring for the stout faucet now, and leave the stout sitting on 8# of CO2 until I want to dispense, at which point I can crank the CO2 regulator up. Once dispensed, purge back down to 8#, etc.

I once had to do sort of the reverse of this with a Hefe before I got my Perlick flow control faucet, and while I am sure I wasted a bunch of CO2 purging all those times, I was able to drink a beer that was carbed to style and did not totally foam out on me.

Seem do-able? Just looking to get my stout fix and then down the road, add the beer gas to the equation.

Thanks!

 

[JuanMoore]

Yep, that should work. Keep in mind that the carb level should be between ~1.0 and 1.8 vol for the nitro faucet to work well. A while back someone here carbed a stout using CO2, and then used 100% argon to serve it through the nitro faucet, and said it worked great.

 

[grv]

Great - thanks! I will defintely consult the ole carb chart with that in mind before I set a pressure.

 

[Mike37]

I run a stout faucet on straight co2 and I just leave it set at 10 psi. It's a slow pour and you don't get the cascade effect but you still get 100% of the creamy head, which is most important to me. The nice thing is you then don't have to crank up and bleed off the co2. It's my preferred method because I'm lazy.

 

[grv]

Awesome! Looks like this will work pretty well.