Draught Is My Craft: Troubleshooting Life from the Draught Technicians Perspective

     A week or two ago, a Customer reached out to me with a product inquiry, about a CO2 gas regulator.  They wanted to know how much gas it could move.  This is, in my opinion, a pretty simple, fundamental question about any commercial-grade, Mechanical device: what sort of performance can I get out of this item?  Will it do what I need it to do?       Most technical questions are not new.  Someone has already done the math and/or the science.  Someone has the data.  Someone engineered the device to perform to a particular set of parameters[we hope].  I thought " I should just call the manufacturer, and ask.  My counterpart there will surely be able to rattle this off, by heart, or have the data readily at hand."   Buckle up.  I thought wrong, on several levels.     First, this manufacturer was somewhat recently acquired by a large conglomerate.  The informational insert, that came wit...

     I have been asking the same question of beverage gas providers, for more than 10 years. I am still struggling to get a concrete answer.  The question is"How do you ensure that the Nitrogen and CO2 in a Mixed Gas Cylinder, dispense in the proper mix, when these Gasses behave so differently?"  The answers I have received, over the years, have varied widely, and inevitably, when I challenge them, or request demonstrated proof, I am ghosted....every time.        Before I delve too deeply into this Fucking Quagmire of an issue: If you are not a Draught/Draft Beer Pro, or are relatively new to Beer, you should read  INTRO TO BEER CARBONATION   before proceeding with this article. You might be able to follow most of it, without reading the article, but knowing why people wish to use beer gas, is pretty crucial. The short answer is, sometimes you need to augment pressure, but if you use pure CO2, it causes both quality and pourin...

        We don't list Carbon Dioxide [CO2] as an ingredient in our beer, but one could argue that we should.  The primary reason we don't, is because CO2 occurs in Beer, as a natural by-product of the brewing process.  The reason that some of us feel it should be included, is because modern brewing, kegging, and packaging methods cause carbonation loss.  The lost CO2 is forcibly reintroduced, during the finishing process of the beer.  If the beer is served from a keg, CO2 is also introduced, again, during dispense.  Finally, in the case of Nitrogenous beers such as Guinness, Boddington's, Old Speckled Hen, and numerous others, we also add Nitrogen gas, as way to lighten the mouth feel of these Low Carbonation Brews.  The reason I would advocate for listing gasses as ingredients, is to also show customers that only 1 or 2 gasses are supposed to be there, and lends credibility to quality advocates.  These Gasses effect flavour and pr...

   I get a lot of confused calls from my customers, and from end users, asking me what the reading on the tank pressure gauge is actually telling them. Well, hopefully it's telling them a  truth. Unfortunately, like a lot of truths, it may not be the truth that they are hoping to hear.    What your gauge is telling you depends on the type of gauge, and what it is reporting on. The first question is, what sort of gas is in the tank? The second question is, what gauge are you looking at?  3rd, what does the gauge measure, and in what units?    The gases we most commonly interact with, as it pertains to beverage dispense, are carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2). Sometimes, we might be dealing with beer gas, AKA Aligal , AKA G-gas, these are simply Trade and Trademark names for specific Blends of CO2 and N2, which may or may not be the best choice for your beer system, but are often a "better" choice. I will tackle that one in a different blog, aft...