karpems

Recipes 

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to kegging and trying to figure something out. I often will bottle condition my beer for months/years prior to drinking. Everything I keep reading about kegging keeps saying to hook the keg to the CO2 and drink in 1 week. How do people age beer in kegs? Does it need to be connected to the CO2 the entire time? Is there a way to ferment in the keg without hooking to CO2?

Thanks!

gtcole

Recipes 

Conditioning in a keg is no different than in a bottle. If you want to naturally carbonate it, you don't use as much sugar but everything else is the same. Some people just prefer to hook it up to a CO2 line and carbonate the beer that way.

heckels

Recipes 

As far as I know you can condition in a keg for as long as you want. The benefit with the keg is you can quickly purge it with co2 to help prevent oxidation from the headspace.

dap325

Recipes 

Once you carb the beer, assuming the keg has no leaks, you can unhook it and age it for as long as you'd like. You can use a corny keg to ferment in also.. they sell kits that adapt the posts/lid for use with an airlock. You would just have to treat it as a primary and transfer to another keg for serving when it was done fermenting. You can also fill bottles for aging/giving to friends. Here is a good method...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/

malkore

Recipes 

those who keg tend to go through the beer faster so they're always keeping the pipeline flowing from primary to keg as quickly as reasonably possible.

you can carb and keep at cellar temps if you like.
kegs are great for IPA's since you need the beer cold to preserve the hopines

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10

bruin_ale

Recipes 

And it's super easy to dry hop in the keg as opposed to a carboy.

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NorCal Brewers

manoaction

Recipes 

People generally put in the keg a couple weeks before they are ready to drink. If you're wanting to age a very long time, then just keep it in your secondary carboy/bucket, and wait to put in your keg until you're three weeks out.

bruin_ale

Recipes 

There's nothing wrong with a keg for aging. As long as that's not your only keg, I think they make fantastic vessels for aging.

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NorCal Brewers

karpems

Recipes 

How do you know how much sugar to add to the keg? How many days before drinking do you hook it up to co2?

Julohan

Recipes 

I used sugar once for kegging. I used the same amount as I would with bottles. Then set it aside for 3 weeks and pulled the relief valve once in awhile.

If you want to age your beer, I would simply hit the keg with 30 psi, then purge a couple times to get the oxygen out. Leave the 30psi head space in the the keg, unhook from co2 and set aside until you are ready for the keg to be tapped. I do this technique if I do not have a free tap.

Or, you could roll the keg around for 5-10 minutes while connected to the co2 and it could be ready to go on tap right away.

If I have a free tap, I just hit the keg with 30 psi purge the air out, then set to serving pressure for a week and then I drink.