How do I force prime w/o a keg or corny?

So I have NO kegging, corny, keezer equipment whatsoever at this stage of my brewing endeavor - I am a bottle only operation.

That being said, the 4th is quickly coming and I have a batch of beer that is ready to be bottled, but that will mean none of my beer is carbed in time for the holiday bbq.

Do I have any options for carbing a beer, perhaps with CO2 cartridges or the likes? I know that a setup to carb a whole 5G batch will run me several hundreds of dollars and I am just not there yet. I can afford the corny and lines and tanks and such, but I want to build my keezer first before anything else.

I am really only looking to carb a gallon or so of this batch - isn't there some sort of 2L bottle method that could work for a day?

If the cost of a keezer is stopping you, don't let it. You can use a bucket with ice water as a keg cooler. You serve off the bottom anyways. Sure, it's a pain to replace ice all the time, but it's doable and cheap.

I don't see any way to quickly carb that beer without a keg of some sort.

You're not going to want to hear this, but even if you had a full kegging setup in place it wouldn't be fully carbed and ready to drink in 2 days.

I'd just enjoy some craft beers on the 4th and save that homebrew batch until it is ready to drink.

To have enough CO2 pressure to do a force carb, especially a fast force carb, you'll need a CO2 tank, and a regulator.
You could then get a cheap little carbonator cap that would work on 1 and 2L bottles (that is, the ones with standard soda caps that are designed to hold pressure), but the tank and regulator are the more expensive end of that. The keg needed to do the entire batch at once is pretty cheap, and a cobra/picnic faucet and line is even cheaper.


Tough love: Either suck it up and drop a little bit of coin for a CO2 tank, regulator, a keg (or two) and the picnic faucet, drink your beer flat, or you're going to be drinking something else for Independence Day.

dcHokie said:

You're not going to want to hear this, but even if you had a full kegging setup in place it wouldn't be fully carbed and ready to drink in 2 days.

I'd just enjoy some craft beers on the 4th and save that homebrew batch until it is ready to drink.

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Carb stone and burst method can be 90% carbed in 24 hours. Both neighbors of mine carb like this when in a pinch regularly.

You can carb chilled beer in 20 minutes. Assuming a keg of beer at serving temperature, use a carb chart to determine your pressure requirement. Lay the keg on its side. Connect the gas side. Apply pressure. Roll keg constantly back and forth to dissolve gas. Pause occasionally and listen for gas bubbling into the keg. When gas no longer bubbles into the keg it is fully carbonated for that temp/pressure combo. This is my go-to method and it works every time. And I swear it takes no more than 20-25 minutes. (Zymurgy had an info on this recently as a part of an article on turbo brewing).

Run down to your local HBS I bet you can get a tank regulator and a single corney for around a hundred bucks if you do some shopping. Pick nick tap and a trashcan with ice in it and your good to go. I personally prefer to carb the beer a little slower than that but its your beer.

laiced, I'll give myself a demerit and caveat my earlier comment.

It CAN be carbed super fast, but whether it is appropriately carbed to style, cleared and ready to drink is up to your personal preference. cheers

dcHokie said:

laiced, I'll give myself a demerit and caveat my earlier comment.

It CAN be carbed super fast, but whether it is appropriately carbed to style, cleared and ready to drink is up to your personal preference. cheers

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Fair enough.

There is a cheaper way. Not sure if you can get it in time, but you could pick up a carbonator cap that fits onto 2-liter bottles, a CO2 charger that uses the tiny canisters, and a ball-lock gas QD to connect the two. Plastic bottles can hold high pressures, and with shaking you should be able to get it carbed up fairly quickly. Haven't tried it myself, but you might be able to find some people on here who have.

erikpete18 said:

There is a cheaper way . . . carbonator cap that fits onto 2-liter bottles . . . a CO2 charger that uses the tiny canisters . . . Plastic bottles can hold high pressures . . . Haven't tried it myself.

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Yeah, soda bottles will hold pressure. 40 or 50 PSI is safe, but there's no regulator on those chargers. It's all or nothing. Like 500-800 PSI. Get a little happy with your trigger finger and you'll have a real mess and may be some chunks of plastic in your eye. They're made to charge stainless kegs not plastic bottles.

I pulled the trigger on one of those when the disconnect wasn't seated tight in the keg. It blew the top off the disconnect putting a hole in the sheet rock ceiling. Would have really hurt if I was looking down at it.

Will it work with a soad bottle? Sure! But how lucky are you feeling. :cross:

erikpete18 said:

There is a cheaper way. Not sure if you can get it in time, but you could pick up a carbonator cap that fits onto 2-liter bottles, a CO2 charger that uses the tiny canisters, and a ball-lock gas QD to connect the two. Plastic bottles can hold high pressures, and with shaking you should be able to get it carbed up fairly quickly. Haven't tried it myself, but you might be able to find some people on here who have.

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This is exactly what I ended up doing. I will say that there was a lot of guess work involved with how much pressure was being put into the 2L bottles, but for an "emergency" it worked out just nicely. I had to set up the rig and fill a bottle until it was hard, then shake vigorously to incorporate the CO2 into the beer itself - it seemed like a contradiction due to making the beer foam and what not (typically what happens when carbonation is being released from the liquid).

I will say that I did this several times, and whenever I had to switch the pressure cap that screws onto the 2L bottle, I lost pressure in that bottle, so I compensated by blowing a few shots of the CO2 directly into the bottle, quickly capping, and shaking for a minute to reinvigorate the carbonation.

Was it as good as from a keg? No.

Did it pour nicely, form a head, and taste like beer. Yes.

Cost me ~ $45 including the CO2 cartridges.