Moving barrels of beer

Backtobrewing

I've been asked to brew some beer for a friends wedding and am worried that I won't get much time to let the barrel settle at the wedding venue. Anyone got any idea how long a barrel needs to settle or should I look to rack it off the secondary fermentation sediment into a clean barrel and then move it.

HBO_Staff

You have a couple of options here, the first is ideally deliver the barrel to the venue a few or at least 2 days before if posisble so it can settle, the longer the better. The second option is as you say to reduce the amount of sediment in the barrel so there is less to disturb, although this can affect the level of carbonation as some suspended sediment is needed to work on the priming sugar and secondary ferment. By transferring the brew to a second fermenting vessel at the end of the primary fermentation, and leaving it to stand and settle for a few days, this allows more suspended sediment to settle, then once you transfer over into the barrel you have in effect left the sediment behind twice, a bit like the process on this link and here are also some other suggestions you could try too:

http://homebrewonline.vanillaforums.com/discussion/457/cloudy-brew-sediment-a-guide-to-reducing-sediment-clearing#latest

The time taken for the brew to carbonate and pressurise in the barrel will increase though, and you may need to inject quite a bit of CO2 to keep the pressure up as it is drawn from the barrel quite quickly (if the barrel will be finished that night though you could slacken the lid off when the flow slows and allow air in and the barrel will often empty fairly well without any CO2).

The other option you may consider is bottling, again leave much of the sediment behind, but the smaller bottles will clear faster once at the venue and left to settle