Carbing and Serving

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kdsarch

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I got so tired of bottling that I jumped in and bought a 3 keg system. I think I have kegging down minus one last detail.

It looks like I am going to be force carbing my last brew at 12 psi. I believe that after a week, you lower the line pressure to around 5-6 for dispensing.

If I brew another batch this weekend, how do I carb that at 12 psi, when the CO2 tank is set to 5-6 for dispensing. I just bought all 6' hoses, so I would hate to have to go out and buy 10' ones.

Any insight on this?

Thanks
 
kdsarch said:
If I brew another batch this weekend, how do I carb that at 12 psi, when the CO2 tank is set to 5-6 for dispensing. I just bought all 6' hoses, so I would hate to have to go out and buy 10' ones.

You can't carb at two diff pressures unless you have a double regulator that can be set for 2 different pressures. You could take the other one off the gas. Jack up the psi to 30 on the new one. Shake it for a couple min then hook them both up at 5 or 6psi and it should work.
 
Okay, I just checked and I dont have a dual regulator, so it looks like the higher pressure way.

How long do I leave it at the higher pressure and shake the keg? Will five minutes do it?
 
  • I would take the carbed keg offline
  • Hook up the uncarbed keg at 30 psi and shake the hell out of it for 10-15 minutes.
  • Listen for the hiss of gas entering the keg while you shake.
  • Wait 24-36 hours for gas to dissolve in beer

**IMPORTANT NOTE**
When hooking both kegs back up, Bleed pressure off both kegs and pressurize at same time to serving pressure. If your running your lines with simple T connections to split the lines to the kegs and you hook up the 30psi keg, you can back pressurize the keg thats set at 5-6psi. Sometimes drawing up foam or liquid into the gas lines.
 
My first recommendation would be to get some prices on a dual body regulator. They come in VERY handy in situations like this.

Any way you look at it, you're going to be unable to pull beer from keg #1 while you're force carbing keg #2. I force carb at 35 psi for 48 hours - if you did that you could cut the amount of time that keg #1 is unavailable.
 
If you got a 3 keg system Im surprised it didnt come with a dual line regulator. But yeah a dual line regualtor will be great for future situations like this.
 
Until you buy more equipment:

The carbing keg takes precedent. Hook it up.
Unhook the serving keg and continue to dispense until the pressue is too low to push beer.
Hook up the dispensing keg again for about 5-6 seconds. Enough to push some gas but not get a full 12 pounds in there.
Disconnect the dispensing keg.
You'll continue to "jump start" the dispensing keg in thismanner. Worked for me just fine. Your beer won't go flat.

A quicker fix is to hook up the carbing keg at 30 PSI (don't shake it) for 36 hours.

Then set it down to serving PSI.
 
You can easily pour a few pints from the fully carbed keg while you're force carbing the new one for a day or two. While dual output regs are nice, it's far cheaper to buy new 3/16" line at 8-10 feet to properly balance the system than buying a new regulator.
 
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