Hot answers tagged kegging
15
Well you carbonate the beer in the keg the same way as if you were going to serve from the keg. There is no carbonation procedure on the way into the bottle.
To get carbonated beer into the bottles however, the cheapest way to do it is to jam some 3/8ths inch tubing onto the end of your picnic tap. Using about an 12 inch piece of tubing you can put the ...
11
I found this online a while ago and have done it this way ever since:
Filling from a Keg:
1.Keg of beer must be chilled and carbonated. I like to over carbonate by a few tenths (0.2) of a volume of CO2 to compensate for lost CO2. (some of that lost CO2 is a good thing as I’ll state later)
2.I use a black Cobra/Picnic tap to dispense the beer from. I ...
11
I like to rinse well, then soak in warm PBW (or cleaner of choice). I fill the keg with cleaner, put on the lid and shake really well. Then I remove the lid, poppets, O-rings and dip tubes and put them in the keg to soak overnight.
Next day everything gets a good rinse in warm water.
I fill the keg with some Starsan (or sanitizer of choice) and let the ...
11
There are two parts - carbonation, and getting it in the bottles.
For carbonation, there are various methods, but I use the set-it-and-forget-it method. Beer goes in keg, keg goes in fridge, CO2 gas gets put on keg. Just set the pressure to the amount of CO2 you want in solution - "volumes" of CO2 - based on the style of beer and a handy temperature / ...
11
It takes at least 3 days to be carbed with the sit and wait method you describe. But a week is really what you need to truly "equilibrate" to the pressure being set. In your case of shooting for >3 volumes I would definitely expect it to take a week.
The beauty of kegging though is that there is no reason to not pull a half pour after day one, two, six ...
10
After cleaning (I use PBW also, occasionally Oxiclean) I turn the keg upside down and let it dry overnight. Then I put the lid on and pressurize to 10 psi. That serves 2 purposes. First, the CO2 helps prevent things from growing in the keg. Second, when I'm ready to use the keg, I pull the pressure relief valve. If there's not still pressure on the keg, I ...
9
Something like this setup would be the minimum for 5 gallons of beer:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/cornelius-keg-system-with-5-lb-co2-tank-comes-empty.html
A 5 gallon keg, CO2 tank, regulator, and tap.
9
I think I would replace all of the seals and soak the kegs in hot Oxyclean Free or PBW for a few days. Maybe rinse and refill with that a couple of times. Then I'd just use them with strong flavored beers, or beers that would go well with the root-beer flavor for a couple of batches. If you don't notice any off-flavors, move to more subtle brews. If ...
9
Oxyclean is a good cleaner, and you can use that on kegs. Diversol on the other hand is a bleaching product (chlorine-based), and like sodium metabisulfate that you were warned not to use will corrode the kegs if left too long. (EDIT: just to clarify, Oxyclean's active ingredient is sodium percarbonate, and this is safe to use. Sodium metabisulfate, ...
8
You can unclog the diptube in place, but it'll just clog right up again. I'd say your best bet is to siphon the beer to another keg, trying to leave as much sediment behind as possible. I would also stick the keg in your fridge for a few days to help coax the hops and proteins to the bottom of the keg.
If that's your only keg, siphon to a sanitized ...
8
Go for it. There's no harm as long as you purge the keg of it's air, replacing it with CO2. At some point, every keg of beer has only two gallons in it. Whether it's right at the start or if it's after 3 gallons have been consumed makes no difference. If you don't purge the keg of air though, your beer will become oxidized.
To purge, prior to racking ...
8
Images speak louder than words: http://www.draft-beer-made-easy.com/beershanks.html
To summarise:
To put a faucet on a keg fridge, you need three main parts:
1) Faucet, this is the "tap", you can get standard ones which are fairly cheap ($20 or so) or go for higher grade, such as perlicks, which are $40 or so, but use a different mechanism that prevents ...
7
When I finally took the plunge I felt the same way.
Here is what I have found are the essentials:
CO2 tank
Keg
1 gas quick connect
1 beer quick connect
1 cobra tap
Food grade quality beer line (for beer and gas line)
1 CO2 regulator
Everything else seems to be extra and icing on the cake. Get the basic set up and you can add parts as you go from ...
7
Are you keeping it hooked up the whole time to the CO2? You will lose carbonation overtime as the carbonation in the beer will push the beer out of the keg when not hooked up to the tank.
You can prime your kegs with sugar like bottling to carbonate. Treating the keg like one big bottle, but most people hook up the beer to a tank with regulator and force ...
7
You can get away with juggling the CO2 between the kegs. But it quickly becomes a pain. (I did it for a short time before building a keezer.)
If the carb/dispense pressure is going to be the same for most of your kegs, then you just need a way to split the CO2 from your regulator to multiple lines. You can use a Wye, or better, a manifold.
If you see ...
6
I have converted all three at one time or another and am currently using a chest freezer for the following reasons:
Chest freezers are larger inside.
Chest freezers are better insulated and use less energy.
My current kegerator is the smallest chest freezer I could find at Lowes. It fits 3 soda kegs and a 5lb CO2 cylinder. My taps are on the front of ...
6
How much priming?
See A Primer on Priming and How to Brew. Add sugar like you normally would.
Prepwork
Follow your normal keg prep work. Clean and sanitize the keg. Inspect the gaskets and seals. Purging it is not necessary, but will not hurt.
General thoughts
I do basically the same thing. My beer ferments for a few weeks, then I transfer it to ...
6
I recommend over carbing a little in the keg to help make up for losses.
Chill your bottles down to help minimize the loss.
And don't pour!!! You can retrofit a bottle filler onto the end of some beer line and fill like that from a bev out connector.
You can also jam a peice of tubing like on a standard racking cane (3/8ths??) into a cobra tap. Make it as ...
6
Too bad this one is already answered because this answer is "the ticket". But hopefully it will be upvoted when you see the picture:
Lay the keg on it's side and hook a wrench on one of the tabs. When you rotate the wrench, it pushes on the ball and the CO2 escapes. Easy, no fuss, no muss.
Or maybe you'll down vote it for such crappy art work :(
6
Joe's answer is great and I would rack to a new keg if all else fails. There's something simple to try first:
bleed off almost all the CO2 in the keg then blow out any hop material in the beer dip tube by connecting the CO2 tank to the beer out line. (You can put the CO2 connector to the beer out post on corny/firestone kegs, don't know about pin lock ...
6
You can just put it in the keg, no need to do anything with the yeast. After two weeks, a regular strength beer will have fermented out, so there's little CO2 going to be produced.
Even if there were some CO2 produced, it takes time for the forced carbonation to enter solution, so any additional co2 from the yeast just contributes to the pressure in the ...
5
If all your seals are airtight a 5 pound tank should last you many kegs. Too many for me to keep count.
Bad gaskets, improperly seated poppets and bad hose connectors or clamps cause small leaks that will drain your CO2 in no time. Some keggers only connect the gas line to the keg when it starts to peter out.
5
Freezing and thawing tends to force CO2 out of solution, but relax - the beer is probably fine. You should be able to remix the ice and beer after everything is thawed, and readjust your carbonation with no trouble. The beer should taste the same after your carbonation issue is fixed.
RDWHAHB!
And yes, the foam is likely a result of heating. For a given ...
5
First, shed a little tear for the empty keg. Then get excited about the next beer to fill it.
I'm not as methodical as brewchez. There are four dirty kegs sitting open in my garage right now. As you can imagine the leftover beer gets pretty dry and cakey. Never a problem.
Clean
PBW and it's ilk are my cleaner of choice. Put a few gallons of hot water ...
5
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5
It's fine to disconnect, or you can leave it connected. In fact, you have 3 choices:
If you have a need to remove the CO2 tank now, you can do that, and connect up again 5 days before you need the beer.
Alternatively, leave the CO2 connected now for 5 days to fully carbonate the beer and then disconnect. The beer will stay carbonated and will be ready ...
4
That's about the fastest method I know of.
But, I've stopped doing it. It might just be me, but I've found I prefer a slightly slower approach. I'll turn up the pressure for 2-3 days and let it sit in the fridge until at the right pressure.
It might not make much of a difference, but the carbonation feels different in my mouth.
4
Before you go and purchase an entire setup that includes a tank consider this. Around me most places I go to won't fill a CO2 tank. They only do swap programs. A swap program is where you go to a gas supply retail store and they take your empty tank and give you a full tank in return. You normally pay some sort of fee for the initial tank, then its a ...
4
Jim makes good comments. Especially regarding chest freezer efficiency at staying cold, even when open.
I'll add that I like a standing fridge for ease of loading and unloading. However, its tough sometimes to reach in and add/remove the connectors from the top of the kegs. Unless you have a full standing fridge (without a freezer portion) it got a little ...
4
I can't tell you how many times I've hooked up a picnic tap with it in the locked-open position :)
But yes, it does sound like you overfilled the keg. That's the only way beer can come out the gas-in post. The gas-in diptube is quite short, but I still like to give it an inch or so of space just to make sure beer can't get back into the diptube.
It will ...
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