Cask Homebrew Fest

Yes, you are right in many ways. They are pre-weighed, so some liked just throwing them in the boil, but how long does it take to weigh hops? I did see firkins being filled at Fullers, plugs go in, the the bung is hammer in. That happened at a fairly high rate, and the guide said it was an undesireable task in the brewery, a different guy would get it the next day. Do they still have plugs in the U.K.?

The homebrewer who was making his own had a firkin.

 

Jeff, the best I could find via web searching is that this Australian Brewing Store is selling 100 gram plugs of East Kent Golding hops from the 2014 crop year. So, apparently somebody (I assume an English hop vendor) produced plugs back in 2014. Maybe they are still (2016) doing this?

Cheers!

http://shop.beerbelly.com.au/east-kent-goldings-hops-plugs-100gm.html

Edit: 100 grams is a weird amount, that equates to 3.5 ounces.

 

I bottle everything and don't have a keg setup, but for an occasional cask-type setup I have a few 1 gallon polypins/cubitainers like this setup: http://www.fuggled.net/2010/03/little-cask-to-go-live.html Very easy to serve out of the spigot.

You can also make your own beer engine (which I haven't done yet). Put them together and you have this:


A lot smaller investment than a full on cask setup, especially if you just serve out of the cubitainer spigot directly. And the one gallon size is much easier to drink in a reasonable amount of time.