Keg King - Apollo Stainless Steel Pressure Lid - Review

Back in August 2022, we got our hands on Keg King’s Apollo Titan fermenter, and it’s been our go-to fermenter ever since! The stainless steel construction is top-notch, and the small opening at the top gives us a reliable seal every time.

One thing we mentioned in our review was that the Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) port, also known as the dry hop port, was just too small. We suggested adding a 1.5" tri-clover opening on the lid to make the fermenter more versatile. This would let you attach a sight glass or hop bong for oxygen-free dry hopping and dry hop without losing all the pressure if you’re into pressure fermenting.

We certainly weren't the only ones to suggest a larger opening on the lid, and it turns out Keg King were listening to the feedback as they have now released a replacement lid for the Apollo range of fermenters to address this.

What's In The Box?

The replacement lid arrived bubble-wrapped in the usual Keg King-style black printed cardboard box. It came with everything you see in the picture below. Here’s the full list of what you get:

• Apollo stainless lid including 2" tri clover port/opening
• 2" tri clover end cap
• 2" beaded seal
• 2" tri clamp
• Liquid and gas ball lock posts
• 3 x spare/replacement safety bungs
• Stainless steel PRV
• Thermowell port cover/cap

There is no plastic ring collar included as the one that comes with your Apollo fermenter still fits.

Stainless Steel Construction

The first thing you’ll notice is that the lid is all stainless steel, making it the perfect match for your Apollo Titan stainless fermenter. It’s also compatible with the other PET plastic models in the Apollo range. Stainless steel is the superstar of brewing materials - it’s durable, heat and chemical resistant, shiny, and super easy to clean. And there's no shortage of it here, with the majority of the components like the end cap, clamp, ball lock posts, PRV housing all being made from stainless steel as well.

Assembly & Installation

Assembly is a breeze. The lid comes with the ball lock posts and PRV attached. Just attach the 2" seal and end cap, secure with the 2" tri clamp, and you’re good to go. If you want to attach a sight glass or other dry hopping device, you can replace the 2" end cap with those. A bit of food-grade lubricant on the red seal helps ensure a nice, leak-free seal when attaching to the fermenter. The lid is held in place with the plastic neck ring from the original lid mechanism.

A Closer Look

Let's dive in and take a closer look at the features of the Stainless Steel Pressure Lid. The gas and liquid ball lock posts are made with stainless steel, with the standard notches at the base of the gas post to help differentiate between them.

Doubling down on the stainless steel construction, we've also got a stainless steel PRV housing with a white (25 psi) PRV included to protect against over-pressuring.

As an extra safety measure, Keg King have included a “safety bung” that will pop out if the pressure goes above 25 psi and the PRV fails to release the excess gas.

This is a welcome addition since it's sometimes easy to forget about safety when dealing with pressurised fermentation vessels. Even within the recommended pressure range, always double-check and release the pressure first before undoing any clamps. It's a simple mistake to make, and if you need a reminder of what could go wrong, check out this Clawhammer Supply video where Kyle almost lost his head to a flying stainless steel end cap when he didn’t depressurize one of their new fermenters before removing a similar end cap!

So after fitting your Spundy (or other) spunding valve to the gas post, you'll ultimately have three layers of pressure protection with the spunding valve, PRV and safety bung.

On the underside of the Pressure Lid, there’s a large white hexagonal piece that screws onto the 1/2" BSP thread where the thermowell would normally go. You can unscrew this and attach the thermowell that came with your Apollo fermenter or leave it in place. One very small complaint here is that if opting to not attach the thermowell, you're left with a hole in the top of the lid (as pictured below), that will inevitably gather dust and whatever else over time. Of course the white cap on the underside prevents any of this from actually entering your fermenter, but we'd ultimately prefer this to be sealed off. We tried to fit one of the spare pressure bungs into this hole but couldn't make it fit (the bung was too large). A smaller rubber bung/stopper to fit here would be a nice little addition in the future.

The star of the show is the 2" opening though, which is plenty of space for even the most aggressive dry-hop charges. Most other fermenters feature 1.5" openings on the lid, so 2" is pretty generous. You can get a 2" to 1.5" adapter if you already have 1.5" accessories or stick with 2" fittings like butterfly valves and sight glasses/dry hop dosers.

The 2" opening is also large enough to be able to insert things like you're digital hydrometer, fill/transfer from your brew kettle, as well as pitching your yeast without having to remove the entire lid mechanism. It's only a little thing, but we much prefer not having to open the entire lid which reduces the likelihood of contaminants and/or oxygen from entering your fermenter.

It’s impressive how much Keg King have fit onto the relatively small lid. While it might seem a bit crowded, there’s enough space to comfortably attach and remove ball lock disconnects from the posts, though you will need to be mindful of how your tri-clamp is oriented to ensure you have enough room. Having the clamp hinge oriented between the ball lock posts and the clamp fastener facing away from the posts as pictured below seemed to work well for us with our testing.

If fitting some kind of dry hopping device onto the lid, you'll more than likely use a butterfly valve so you'll need to be careful when orienting this to ensure you can operate the butterfly valve and still be able to access all the other components on the lid as well.

The Price

The only real downside is the price. At AUD$74.95, it’s not cheap, but stainless steel equipment rarely is. You’re paying a premium price for a premium product. For us, it was an easy decision - a stainless lid on our stainless fermenter will last for years with proper care and maintenance. Plus, the ability to dry hop under pressure and without needing to remove the entire lid assembly is a real game-changer, and well worth the investment.

Final Thoughts

With the seemingly endless surge in popularity of hop-forward style beers, homebrewers are demanding the best equipment to help them make these styles at home. There's no disputing the negative impact that dissolved oxygen has on finished beer, so equipment to help reduce oxygen exposure is becoming a must. As a consumer it's also great to see manufacturers like Keg King listening to customer feedback and making improvements.

The new Apollo Stainless Steel Pressure Lid, along with a few other accessories, will up your dry hopping game and enhance your hoppy IPA's and Pale Ales. Even without these accessories, you can gain the added convenience of being able to add open your fermenter for filling, pitching yeast or dropping in your digital hydrometer without needing to remove the entire lid.

Sure, it's a bit pricey, but you're paying for top-notch quality. If you're serious about brewing these styles, this upgrade is definitely worth considering for your next brew day!

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Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager - BrewZilla Brew Day

Our latest brew day was for our Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager recipe. Here's how it went

We started off in the usual fashion with collecting our water. 21L of strike water to begin with and 12L of sparge water (recipe calls for 9 but we always have a bit extra just in case)

We made our water chemistry adjustments with additions of calcium chloride, calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate

We also adjusted the strike and sparge water using phosphoric acid - sparge water adjusted to 5.43 - well within the generally recommended 5.2 - 5.6 range.

Laying out our ingredients - 3kg of pilsner malt and 1.5kg of flaked rice

With a relatively light grain bill of only 4.5kg all up, mashing in was pretty easy - we added the flaked rice after adding the pilsner malt

When we were researching this recipe, we came across a few people who mentioned that flaked rice can make for a really thick mash - and they weren't kidding. Not sure if it was just the rice or if the KegLand grain crush was a bit finer than what we normally get from our other local homebrew shop, but this mash was hard work.

After mashing in we mixed everything and left the grain bed to settle for 10 minutes before taking a pH reading - 5.42. Recipe estimated 5.32, so this was a bit higher but still acceptable.

We then began recirculating the wort - we couldn't lower the recirculation speed any lower, and even still we weren't getting any flow back through the grain bed so there was plenty of manual stirring going on.

We opted for a different mash schedule that we hadn't used before, with a 30 minute rest at 63°C followed by a 30 minute rest at 70°C. This should help promote plenty of conversion of sugars and a highly fermentable wort with a low finishing gravity

It took a good 10-15 minutes to raise the temperature up to 70°C for the second mash step but we got there.

Even at this higher temperature, recirculation was painfully slow, even after adding loads of rice hulls.

The sparge was also slow, with plenty of stirring required to coax the sparge water back through the grain bed. After completing the sparge, we took a gravity reading and ended up with 1.041 - a couple of points above our predicted gravity, and as it turns out, this reading was actually low (after determining our original gravity post-boil)

While waiting for the boil, we began measuring out our first hop addition of Hallertau Tradition hops

We also decided to take a pre-boil pH reading which gave us a surprisingly high 5.59. Very strange that this somehow ended up higher than it was at the start of the mash, perhaps our sparge water wasn't as low as we thought and it raised the pH somehow? Our pH meter was calibrated right before we started brewing so we're a bit perplexed by this.

We added another 1mL of phosphoric acid which dropped the pH back down to 5.49. We probably should have tried to go a bit lower but we're always nervous about overshooting and getting the pH too low.

Rolling boil underway - plenty of hot break forming on top.

We added our hops at 60 minutes and 10 minutes, and also added yeast nutrient and whirlfloc with 10 minutes remaining in the boil

Post-boil, original gravity of 1.046 - quite a few points higher than expected

And after taking a floating hydrometer sample, it looks like the gravity was closer to 1.050! Looks like our digital refractometer may be reading a little low.

We didn't take a photo of it, but our post-boil pH was higher again, at around 5.7! Totally confusing as it's generally expected that the pH will drop a couple of points during the boil, not climb higher. We're hoping it's some kind of equipment error, or perhaps there was something wrong with the sample we took. We did some reading that suggested the sample should be taken once the wort has cooled so the calcium can drop out of it, so we may try this next time (though we did cool our sample in an ice bath before taking the pH reading).

One of our favourite things about brewing in winter is the cold ground water that makes post-boil chilling so much faster. The cold break looks pretty cool too when chilling

Finally we transferred to our Keg King Apollo Titan fermenter at around 25°C and left it to cool in our fermentation fridge overnight to ~12°C before pitching 2 packets of W34-70 dry yeast.

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Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager - All Grain Recipe

 

Foreword

We're on a mission to try out all the different types of lagers, and next up is a Japanese rice lager. We're big fans of Japanese lagers, especially Asahi, so if we can whip up something even close to that, we'll be pretty happy.

The recipe is straightforward with just pilsner malt and flaked rice. Honestly, we don't feel like dealing with the hassle of a full cereal mash, so flaked rice is a perfect shortcut since it can go straight into the mash with the pilsner malt.

The mash schedule is a bit unique, with a 30-minute rest at 63°C and another 30-minute rest at 70°C. This should help us get maximum fermentability and hopefully give us a nice low finishing gravity and dry finish.

For hops, we're using Hallertau Tradition because we've got some leftover from previous batches. And for yeast, we're switching things up with W34/70 instead of our usual Novalager, just for a change of pace. Though, Novalager will probably stay our go-to lager yeast in the future.

Vitals

Batch Volume: 22L 
Boil Time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%

Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.007
IBU (Tinseth): 19
BU/GU: 0.44
Colour: 5.7 EBC
Expected ABV: 4.9%

Mash

Mash Step 1: 63°C - 30 minutes
Mash Step 2: 70°C - 30 minutes
Mash Out: 75°C - 10 minutes

Fermentables

3.0kg - Gladfield Pilsner Malt
1.5kg - Flaked Rice

Hops

60 mins - Hallertau Tradition - 22g - 14 IBU
10 mins - Hallertau Tradition - 25g - 5 IBU

Yeast

Fermentis Saflager W-34/70 - Dry - 2 Packets

Fermentation

10°C - 5 days
13°C - 2 days
17°C - 1 day
19°C - 1 day

Carbonation

2.4 CO2-vol

Water Profile 

"Balanced" water profile

Ca2+ (Calcium): 34
Mg2+ (Magnesium): 10
Na+ (Sodium): 29
Cl- (Chloride): 70
SO42- (Sulfate): 70
HCO3- (Bicarbonate): 37

Want to see how it went? Check out the link to the Brew Day post below.

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KegLand - Premium Stainless Steel Drill Powered Mash Stirrer - Review

Let's face it, brewing beer is a delightful blend of art and science, but nobody wants to spend eons stirring like a medieval alchemist. Enter the KegLand Premium Stainless Steel Drill Powered Mash Stirrer & Mixer (KL32247) - a bit like the superhero of your brewing toolkit.

Imagine a giant kitchen mixer for your brew day, hooked up to your trusty drill. It's simple, effective, and surprisingly fun.

Crafted entirely from stainless steel (because brewers love shiny, easy-to-clean things), this mixer is built to last. At 600mm long, it might feel a bit lengthy when attached to your drill, but that length ensures it can reach the depths of even the mightiest brew kettle without breaking a sweat. KegLand recommends it for use in their 35L, 65L, and 100L BrewZilla units.

We've used it in the 35L BrewZilla (3.1.1 version), and find the 70mm mixer diameter is a good working size - large enough to be effective but small enough so it can be maneuvered around, particular if you're using the overflow pipe.

The hex drive end should fit any electric drill and ensures a good grip to avoid slippage. Depending on your water to grist ratio and what your grist is made of, there's a surprising amount of torque required to turn the paddle - but we'd recommend a slow and steady mixing speed, there's really no need to be stirring your mash bed at 10,000 rpm. It's also worth mentioning to be careful when moving the mixing head towards the top of the grain bed to ensure you don't go spraying wort and bits of grain everywhere.

Properly mixing your grains into your mash water is important to ensure you don't end up with clumps of dried grain, commonly known as "dough balls" which will cause a drop in your efficiency, since the dry grains contained in the middle of the ball aren't wetted and therefore can't have their starches converted to sugars during the mashing process. Stirring with a regular mash paddle can do the same but takes longer and requires more effort.

As for its effectiveness, after using the stirrer in several batches, we’ve consistently seen a slightly higher pre-boil efficiency. With no other equipment changes made during these batches, we’re attributing this to the stirrer. We’re talking maybe 2 or 3 gravity points here - not huge, but definitely noticeable. It might be a worthwhile addition to your brewing arsenal if you’re consistently falling a little short of your expected efficiency.

So, if you're tired of arm day at the brewery and looking to upgrade your mash game, check out the Premium Stainless Steel Drill Powered Mash Stirrer & Mixer, available at kegland.com.au and other KegLand distributors for AUD$24.95.

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Raspberry Sour - Tasting Notes/Review

Our inaugural attempt at crafting a sour beer has yielded delightful results that exceed our expectations. Utilizing Philly Sour yeast proved to be a winning choice, aligning closely with the experiences of others who have explored its capabilities.

To begin, we characterize this brew more as a "tart" fruit beer than a "sour," offering a nuanced tang that remains approachable, even for those typically averse to sour styles.

Visually striking, our creation boasts a brilliant ruby-red hue, complemented by a fluffy, pinkish-white head - a stunning result of incorporating 2.5kg of defrosted raspberries directly into the fermenter. Its remarkable clarity further enhances its appeal.

The aroma is dominated by ripe raspberry notes, subtly underscored by a hint of funky complexity, offering a preview of its intriguing profile.

Upon the first sip, raspberry takes the lead, its natural sweetness tempered by fermentation yet still discernible, delivering a refreshing burst of flavor. The tartness gradually emerges, accompanied by a pleasantly dry finish that invites repeated enjoyment.

The mouthfeel is medium-bodied, with minimal hop presence, aligning with our deliberate low IBU strategy. We are intrigued by the idea of slightly increasing IBUs, possibly to 15-20, to explore how it might interplay with the raspberry character.

The raspberry essence is pronounced throughout, so much so that one might mistake it for a raspberry cider, albeit with a fuller mouthfeel that distinguishes it from typical ciders.

Ideal for summer despite its winter inception, this brew proves exceptionally refreshing.

We are immensely satisfied with our inaugural batch and look forward to further experimentation. Future iterations may feature different fruits - passionfruit or mango perhaps, while maintaining our current fruit dosage, which we find perfectly balanced.

Considering adding lactose to enhance residual sweetness is another avenue we contemplate, albeit cautiously, to avoid straying into the "milkshake sour" territory.

Moreover, we are eager to fine-tune bitterness levels to achieve better harmony with sweetness.

Special commendation goes to Philly Sour yeast, which truly shines in this brew. Its simplicity in use, sparing us from more aggressive bacteria or culture introductions, makes brewing such beers far less daunting.

With this success under our belt, we eagerly anticipate refining our skills with future sour beer endeavors.

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