Dipping My Toe into Kegging?!

Okay, I've gone from extract brewing to AG recently, with the help of everyone here. THANK YOU! Now I've been toying with the idea of kegging my beers. I tried a 'search' but came up empty. Many of you here know me well enough (I think).

I'm looking for a primer on kegging. I'd still like to have the ability to put my finished beers into 12 oz. bottles for an occasional portable 12-pack. Please guide me!

Thanks, everybody!

While I don't really know anything about kegging, I am pretty sure that if you dip your toe in it then chances are you will infect your beer. I would think it depends on where your feet have been... but just saying. <shrugs>

Rhoobarb said:

I'm looking for a primer on kegging. I'd still like to have the ability to put my finished beers into 12 oz. bottles for an occasional portable 12-pack.

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What you could use is a 3 gallon keg so the other 2gal can go into ~20 twelve ounce bottles. On top of the keg, you need a CO2 cylinder, regulator, hoses, fittings to match the keg post style(ball lock vs. pin lock), and a tap of some sort(either a plastic Pony tap or even better is a chrome faucet). Check "kegging homebrew", "kegging beer", etc on your favorite search engine.

Here are the ones I have to work with:

I have been kegging and bottling for some time. I keg in 5 and 3 gallon cornys. I'm not sure what info you need but here are plans for a Counter-Pressure Bottle Filler too.

Wild

You won't find much on kegging, it's too simple. I've kegged from the very beginning. I also use the kegs for the secondary fermentation, it makes life really easy. Just rack from the primary into the keg. Typically the first pint or two from a keg will have some yeast in it. Maybe one out of 10 batches has to be filtered into another keg. If you want more carbonation, drawn off those first pints, then open the keg and add primer.

Since I don't make highly carbonated ales, if I want to bottle some, I just bottle from the keg using the party tap. There is a new gadget called the BeerGun, which makes filling bottles from a keg at pressure, much easier. I haven't purchased one, but I might for bottling ciders.

Two things about kegs:

If you buy used kegs that have not been rebuilt, buy new gaskets and after cleaning the keg replace all of the gaskets. The rubber tends to pick up flavors and most used kegs are from the soda/pop industry. Second, I always store empty kegs with a little sanitizer (do not use bleach) in them under one or two psi of CO2. When I'm ready to use the keg, I attach a party tap and run the sanitizer out. If it doesn't flow, then I know the keg has sealing problems and I'll replace the gaskets.

Thanks for the replies. I also found a recent back-issure of BYO that had a cover story on kegging. That should get me off to the right foot (toe-dipping, foot, what is it with the feet metaphores?).

I get all my brewing stuff from http://www.williamsbrewing.com/ They have some good tutorials on kegging. But it's really easy:

1) Brew your beer as usual.
2) Measure out the appropriate amount of priming sugar for a keg (it's not as much as for bottling - IIRC, 3 oz vs. 5 oz). Add sugar to keg.
3) Put in beer.
4) Seal up the keg and wait for fermentation to take place.
5) Attach a regulator, CO2 bottle, and tap to your keg.
6) Have a homebrew!

Enjoy!

Sean

I've never naturally carbonated ina a keg. I've allways done my primay and secondary fermentation in buckets and carboys,then racked into keg and force carbonated it. I'd crank the pressure up to about 30lbs and shake the hell out of it. ready to go in 15 min LOL
RK

I wrote an article for my website called Kegging 101. It's a good intro into kegging and will give you a list of the basic equipment you need to consider. The link is here:

http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/Kegging101-1.html

I hope this helps you out.

Prosit!

Thanks for the link, tnls. I just ordered my equipment a few nights ago after sitting on the fence for a while.

What are good places to ask about getting your Co2 cylinder filled?

LupusUmbrus said:

Thanks for the link, tnls. I just ordered my equipment a few nights ago after sitting on the fence for a while.

What are good places to ask about getting your Co2 cylinder filled?

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I go to a local welding shop. You can also ask at a fire extinguisher supplier.

Welding supply shops will exchange CO2 bottles. I pay $7 per bottle for 10 lb bottles. Some companies that sell fire fighting equipment can fill bottles. I like exchanging, it's fast and I know the bottle has been tested.

tnlandsailor said:

The link is here:

http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/Kegging101-1.html

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I just tried to open the page from this link and the formatting is all hosed up. Text from the headers is overwriting other text and the pictures are sitting on top of the paragraphs. I'd really like to view the pages. I'm using IE6.0. What browser did you set this up for?

weird... for me IE6 works just fine, but FireFox is all messed up.

-walker

tnlandsailor said:

I wrote an article for my website called Kegging 101. It's a good intro into kegging and will give you a list of the basic equipment you need to consider. The link is here:

http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/Kegging101-1.html

I hope this helps you out.

Prosit!

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Hey, I think that is the most handy information I've seen on kegging yet. Thanks for the info. How much do you think someone will spend total. they've got kits for sale on ebay for about 180.

Walker said:

weird... for me IE6 works just fine, but FireFox is all messed up.

-walker

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Usually problems like this occur when a page is formatted for a specific browser (or version of browsers). Might be a setting I need to change, although it's only the pages on his site that are funky. I suppose I could wait until I get home and go look on my Mac. Damn Windoze machine at work...