The whole point of brewing the bitter and building the beer engine was in support of the Yard City Cask Fest. That's how it turned out anyway. I told Matt I'd keg-condition one of the kegs of bitter, and decided just over a week before the event that I'd go ahead and assemble a beer engine for dispensing. I ended up keg-conditioning both kegs of bitter and offered them both up for the fest. Thankfully only one was needed and the other is currently on tap in my basement.
Both halves of the bitter finished at 1.012, making it ~4% ABV. The 1098 half dropped bright much sooner than the 1028 half, which is opposite of what Matt expected. Shows how much Matt knows. I primed each keg for about 1.25 volumes of CO2. Since they were to be dispensed by beer engine, the goal was that they would be saturated, but not oversaturated, with CO2 at dispensing temp, which in this case was supposed to be 50-54°F. It really only needed about 1 volume, but I figured if I overshot a little bit it would be easier to adjust carbonation downward than upward (didn't want to have to cheat and force carb if too low).
Anyway, the Fest was a huge success, the beer was excellent and well received, and the beer engines worked like a charm. Next year we're going to have to make it a bigger shindig, with multiple brewers providing beer and a larger venue. Plus we can't count on the beautiful weather we lucked out with in March, so we may need to move it indoors somewhere or change the date to a more reliable month weather-wise. Nice thing about outdoors in March, though, is that we didn't need to figure out any refrigeration to keep the beer at just the right temp.
Oh, and thanks to Chris Devlin (yes, that Chris Devlin) for the pic, used entirely w/out his permission.
