Holiday Pumpkin Cask Ale Delivery System

It was October again and I wanted to take some of my newly brewed pumpkin ale to a Halloween party at a friend's house. The beer was in the fermenter, unspiced, as it is my habit to add the pumpkin pie type spices at bottling time, to taste.

Instead of bottling the pumpkin ale to take to the party as I had done in past years, I was thinking I would try out an idea I had been working on for a gravity feed cask system. The idea was basically to switch the dip tubes inside a ball-lock soda keg and allow the beer to carbonate naturally with priming sugar inside the keg. At serving time I would lay the keg on its side and prop the bottom end up so that the liquid level would fall beneath the reach of what would normally be the beverage dip tube. With the addition of a gas quick disconnect, this long beverage dip tube would now be able to act as a vent to allow air or a low volume of CO2 into the keg above the liquid level. Then I would simply attach a faucet to the other short dip tubed keg post and dispense the beer via gravity feed.

As I was running this idea by a friend, he interrupted with the irresistible idea of replacing the soda keg with a hollowed out pumpkin with a faucet stuck in the side. I was immediately taken with the thought. Really, what better way to serve cask conditioned pumpkin ale that from a freakin' pumpkin?

I set to work figuring out how to make this happen. I went over and over and around and around with the idea and eventually settled on the disappointing truth that I simply did not trust a pumpkin to withstand the demands I would be placing on it without leaking, breaking or otherwise failing. And if there was one thing I did know, it was that I didn't want my precious pumpkin ale to end up all over the inside of my Jeep or as a giant puddle on my friend's floor.

Refusing to abandon the idea of dispensing my beer from a pumpkin and yet sure I didn't trust said pumpkin to contain the beer inside its own fragile flesh, I set upon the next incarnation of the project. That is, concocting a separate cask delivery system which could be contained inside of a pumpkin shell, thereby eliminating the need to rely on the stability of the pumpkin itself.

Enter the humble plastic two liter soda bottle. I had had some previous experience using soda bottles as a medium for transporting and dispensing homemade beer, so I turned to them again for my pumpkin cask project.

The requirements for this new system were:

1. Vessel(s) must be able to hold pressure in order to facilitate carbonation

2. Vessel(s) must be of a size to realistically fit inside of a hollowed out pumpkin

3. Vessel(s) must be capable of dispensing beer via gravity/atmospheric pressure through a faucet.

Here is how a two liter soda bottle was able to meet these requirements and perform as a cask beer delivery system:

My initial thought was to add a bottling bucket type drum tap or similar valved bulkhead to the side of the plastic bottle. However, in order to be sure that the bottles would not leak gas (or beer!) during the carbonation phase, I decided I didn't want to make any modifications to the body of the bottle itself which might compromise it's integrity as a pressure vessel.

In my previous project attempts with soda bottles I had drilled holes through the lids to attach carbonating and dispensing tubes. I knew that the chance of a modified lid leaking, especially with the beer sitting directly on top of it, were pretty high.

I had a little piece of equipment in my stash called a Carbonator. It is simply a ball-lock gas post threaded to fit the top of a soda bottle. In this little piece of unassuming red plastic I had found my solution.

The following steps took the pumpkin ale from fermenter to glass:

Clean and sanitize four two liter soda bottles.

Fill bottles (not completely) with beer from the fermenter.

Add sanitized spice blend and priming sugar solution to each bottle.

Cap each bottle with regular soda lid.

Wait for natural carbonation to occur.

Replace soda cap with Carbonator

Attach gas quick disconnect to Carbonator

Run beer line from QD to faucet.

Invert bottle.

Cut or poke hole in top (bottom) of bottle for air.

Attach sanitary air filter (optional)

Dispense and drink beer!

I got the biggest pumpkin I could find (without breaking the bank). I cut off the top and cleaned it out and dropped a beer shank with faucet through the side. The beer filled cask. Carbonator, QD and beer hose were hooked up and placed inside the pumpkin.

When one bottle emptied I simply replaced it in the pumpkin with a full one until all four casks were kicked.