Keg Virgin

I'm about to re-brew my first extract brew ever (because it's almost failsafe) for my first attempt at kegging. I bought the basic kegging kit from Northern Brewer, but it came with no instructions on how to properly keg. I have Dave Miller's homebrew book and my subscription BYO (and an OLD edition of TNCJHB). Does anyone have a good resource on how to keg it correctly? Also, I bought a chest freezer in the hope of doing lagers at some point. Can I convert it into a "kegerator"--(install taps, etc) and still use it as a lager fridge when I don't have anything on tap?

Thanks for your help...this is ultra-important because I'm brewing and kegging for my wedding in July!

BREW ON

There have been a number of threads here on kegging. Basically, you just need to sanitize the keg and your beverage out line, then rack from your bucket to the keg once it is done fermenting.
You don't say how you plan to carb the keg but if you are going to go the natural way use about half the priming sugar you would if you were bottling. I use the set and sit method which works pretty good for me.
As far as the freezer, you can convert it to a keggerator easy enough, you will need some time of temp regulator for it and it will depend on the dimmensions as to how much stuff you can cram in there .

2nd Street Brewery said:

You don't say how you plan to carb the keg but if you are going to go the natural way use about half the priming sugar you would if you were bottling. .

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I was planning on force carbonating it with my CO2 tank.

So are you saying it's possible to convert a chest freezer to a kegerator and still use it for lagering in the "off season?"

Sure, If you have enough room in the freezer I don't see why you couldn't put a couple of corneys and a carboy in there. The serving temp for your beer should be in the lagering range so that won't be an issue. As I said you wll need an external temp controller such as a Johnson or Ranco(?) but it is possible to do.

Next question then...can anybody point me in the direction to modify a chest freezer by adding a tap on the top lid?

brackbrew said:

Next question then...can anybody point me in the direction to modify a chest freezer by adding a tap on the top lid?

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You need to check out Monster_Mash's freezer set up. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/brewer007/my_photos