On getting my second pint of Timothy Taylor Best Bitter from the garage last night a rather horrible thing happened. Let me explain. I use King Keg top tap pressure barrels with a drum tap. These taps come apart for cleaning. They can also be very stiff in operation requiring quite a bit of turning. They also can wear, as I found out last night. The tap on the barrel was indeed very stiff and unknown to me obviously worn. I turned it, rather to much as it happened and the top bit came off. This resulted in a free flow of beer of about 1 pint into my glass and another pint on the floor. I could not turn the tap off and as you can image I was in a bit of a tiss. I rushed to the kitchen to grab a bucket not wanting 40 pints of beer all over the garage floor. By the time I got back to the garage the plastic cup, which I use to catch the drips from the tap was nearly full but the flow had thankfully stopped. All the pressure in the barrel had escaped and the level of the beer was below the tap. I sterilised a spare drum tap and with difficulty took the naughty one off and fitted the spare. This activity caused the beer in the barrel to be disturbed quite a bit resulting in a cloudy beer. It may also have got too much oxygen in it. I will have to leave it now for 3 or 4 days to see if it clears and remains drinkable. If it is still cloudy I will put some fining's in and fingers crossed I will manage to salvage some good beer from it.
However, I will also have to rethink the type of tap that I use on my barrels and this will have to be investigated. Oh well! These things are sent to try us or so they tell us. I personally think they are sent to blight our lives and make us waste beer. Is there some sort of anti-beer god zapping us with plagues of beer spillage and cocking up beer production. If there is it is living in my shed with a secret door directly into my garage.
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