Help With Kegging My First Batch

Cheers All!

Just stopping by to ask a few questions regarding kegging my first extract. I brewed an IPA and a pale ale a couple of saturdays ago with some inherited homebrewing equipment that a friend gave to me.

I have almost al the necessary equipment for kegging my first batch including the kegs and CO2 tanks with regulators. I'll go ahead and get to my questions.

1) Is it necessary to cool the beer after kegging or can I just increase the CO2 pressure to carbonate the beer? At the time being I do not have an extra fridge to chill the beer after it has been kegged. I have read mixed things on this subject.

2) What is the best way to steralize an old 5 gallon keg? I used an iodine solution for my fermentation buckets and equipment. Can I presurize the solution and force it through the tubing inside the keg?

3) What volume of CO2 should I shoot for for an IPA and Pale Ale?

Any other tips are most welcome and appreciated!

(1) No you don't have to cool it, but it takes more pressure to carb it the warmer it is. There's a chart that shows this along with the beer volumes, partially answering your question #3.
(2) I suggest you disassemble the keg posts, then you can take the tube out and you can disassemble the poppets from the posts and scrub them out, then sanitize them. You can also get a really thin tubing brush and use it to clean out the dip tube before sterilizing it. You don't need to pressurize to sanitiΩze the tubing inside the keg anyway, just fill keg w/sanitizer and relieve the valve on the post so the sanitizer can get up into the tube. You can later flip the keg upside down, too.
(3) See charts in this link, and save to your favorites or cut and paste into a reference document for yourself: http://hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_html/docs/balance.html

Oh, and good luck! Kegging is the best, as long as you can avoid running out of hb! (my current problem)

One mistake I made is that on the ball lock fittings, the in post takes the grey, and the out post takes the black. I got the grey fitting on my out post somehow and filled my regulator and hose with brew. And it was a mother to get back off. I just recently started kegging also, and I love it. I dont have a fridge yet I condition my ales at room temp and when I am ready for them I ice them down for several hours....Then crank regulator up to 30psi and shake around for about 60 seconds..... most of the time in about 8 hours or so its ready to drink....Then I get my beer gun and bottle some, and drink the rest.....Good Luck!

Thanks for the helpful hints! I will be kegging on Sunday and will post back and let you all know how it went.

LouT said:

(1) No you don't have to cool it, but it takes more pressure to carb it the warmer it is. There's a chart that shows this along with the beer volumes, partially answering your question #3.
(2) I suggest you disassemble the keg posts, then you can take the tube out and you can disassemble the poppets from the posts and scrub them out, then sanitize them. You can also get a really thin tubing brush and use it to clean out the dip tube before sterilizing it. You don't need to pressurize to sanitiΩze the tubing inside the keg anyway, just fill keg w/sanitizer and relieve the valve on the post so the sanitizer can get up into the tube. You can later flip the keg upside down, too.
(3) See charts in this link, and save to your favorites or cut and paste into a reference document for yourself: http://hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_html/docs/balance.html

Oh, and good luck! Kegging is the best, as long as you can avoid running out of hb! (my current problem)

Click to expand...

Yeah...what he said.

Thanks LouT. I'm a bit too "homebrewed" up tonight to go to the trouble.

Well, The first two batches are now in the keg.

I ended up taking the posts off and replacing all the o-rings inside and out just for good measure.

The kegs were filthy on the inside. I had to have my wife (She is awesome) stick her arm into the keg to really get it scrubbed (My Arm wouldn't fit past the elbow...)

I have the kegs attached to the CO2 tank with 30 PSI as I will be storing the beer in temps of the high 70's.

Thanks again to everyone for the helpful hints!


One more question if I may, how long will it take for the beer to carbonate? and will leaving it at a higher CO2 pressure of 30 PSI once it has finished carbonating have any adverse affects?


Cheers

well, keeping in mind that i'm new to kegging also, if it were me, I'd put the kegs on some pressure, but not leave them hooked up at 30psi if you're gonna age em at 70F.

put them on some gas, bleed the safety valve, then add more gas, say 10psi.
this gets rid of the oxygen in the keg so the beer can't oxidize.
then let it sit.

the warmer the beer, the less CO2 goes into solution and the more rapidly it wants to come out of solution. So when you're ready to drink your beer, cool it and carb it at that stage.