I've not actually seen this as a topic here, but some years back I asked you's all about home bread making and got reams of advice, so I'mm fairly confident that there are some closet brewers here too !

Here's the question - and I come from the point of extensive home-brewing 25 or so years ago. My SIL is coming up for a big birthday and my daughter has come up with the idea of a brewing class offered by the local brewery; for £175 a small group get to choose their own recipe and make the beer - that yields 40 litres in bottles, but for an extra £15, you get 40l in bottles plus 40l in a returnable barrel.

There are going to be 4 of us, so how do we split, without wastage, the 40l in the barrel ? Alright - one hell of a party, but we're too old for that!! Two options I can see - get a suitable number of bottles and bottle the balance ourselves or get 4 off 2 gallon pressure barrels.

Would I be right in assuming that because the brewery is saying that the 40l barrel would need to settle, that the beer will be live and that we will just be able to prime it to get a head after splitting the 40l up into bottles or barrels ?

Actually a thought that I should just phone the brewery and ask if they will fill the 2 gallon barrels if I supply them.

Rob