Busy Life is Busy... Also, Keg Jumping...

So... been awhile, amirite??

Don't really know where to start. I'll probz be breaking this up into a few quick posts to keep your (and my own) attention. I'm so far behind at this point, I feel like I should apologize. So... Sry... my bad... Life is super busy right now and brewing has taken a back seat, also blogging has taken the way way back seat, like in my mom's '87 Caprice Classic station wagon when I was growing up... with the fold out backseat that faced backwards, and when any friends rode back there with me they guaranteed, 100%, got carsick and barfed... just like that.

Anyway... where did I leave off? prevacation? right. So I keg jumped the two kegs I was bringing to Maine. When you bottle homebrew, you always end up with a little bit of sediment on the bottom of each bottle. If you are patient the sediment tightens up and you can pour the beer off without really disturbing it. The same is true when kegging. Sediment falls to the bottom of the keg, after the first few pours clears the sediment around the pickup tube you get clear beer... unless the keg gets moved (like say by a four hour car ride to Maine) and the sediment stirs back up. So, by keg jumping I basically moved the beer from one keg to another and left the sediment behind.

 So I built a keg jumping line. Simple, all it is is a length of beer line with a liquid disconnect on either end.

The process of keg jumping is also simple. Let kegs chill and settle for a week or so in kegerator, tap and pour a few pints to get clear beer, hook up jumping line to the settled keg and a clean, sanitized and empty keg. With serving pressure on the full keg, lift the pressure relief on the empty keg allowing the beer to flow. When the full keg is empty and the empty keg is full, that's it... keg jumped.

Repeat on the second keg, load kegs and kegerator into the van and off to Maine I went. I had originally planned on using a cooler full of ice and picnic taps to serve, but I was able to bring the whole kegerator setup to the cottage... totally pimp.

So any guesses on how long 10 gallons of homebrew lasted in a cottage full of people?? Think on it... I'll let you know next time when I tell you all about vacation... total cliffhanger! Later...