Corny Keg Vs. Bottling

I'm very interested in purchasing a corney keg, I had a few questions. SO as apposed to bottling, you siphon your brew into the keg and add CO2, but do you then store it? Does it need to stay cold? Do you always have to have your CO2 tank attached? How soon is it able to be served? I know you have to bottle ferment for up to two weeks-4 months, so how different is the corney keg?

Brian_GFH said:

I'm very interested in purchasing a corney keg, I had a few questions. SO as apposed to bottling, you siphon your brew into the keg and add CO2, but do you then store it? Does it need to stay cold? Do you always have to have your CO2 tank attached? How soon is it able to be served? I know you have to bottle ferment for up to two weeks-4 months, so how different is the corney keg?

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You don't have to keep it cold if you don't want to. You keep it on the gas while it's carbing up, but you don't have to keep it on gas until you're ready to carb it up and serve it. For serving, it has to stay on the gas.

You can quick carb it, or do a "set it and forget it" carbing, so the time it takes varies but usually a week is a pretty good standard length of time.

Having just kegged for the first time I can tell you it is way easier than bottling. Kegs do not need to be kept cold until you serve them. I naturally conditioned my keg for 2 weeks then in the fridge for 24 hours, co2 and pour. Once you seal your keg and purge out the O2 you don't need to keep CO2 on it if naturally conditioning. You can force carb it and that requires CO2 on it and you'll need to keep it in the fridge.

So once in the keg you do not need any priming sugar while its conditioning?

That depends on how you want to carbonate the beer.
You can either naturally carbonate it via priming sugar, or you can hook it up to a CO2 tank.

It doesn't matter which way you carbonate the beer, it will still need some time to condition.

Brian_GFH said:

So once in the keg you do not need any priming sugar while its conditioning?

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No you don't need priming sugar. You can force carbonate it by putting pressure on the keg. You can carbonate it anywhere from 15 psi to 50 psi. 15 would take a week or more. 50 psi and a good shake would take a day. I keep 30 psi on the kegs while in the fridge for 3 days then lower to 12-13 psi for serving. You don't have to put them in the fridge but it helps crash out any yeast still in suspension to clear up the beer faster. Make sure your kegs keep a seal first or you may empty a whole bottle of CO2 on carbonating your beer. Just speaking from experience.

Sorry for the hijack, but i have a question about kegging. After having bad tasting beer in my kegs i went back to bottling. 4 days ago i decided to try kegging again. I cleaned the **** out of the keg and line, then sanitized, and kegged the beer. It has the same cardboard flavor that the last one had. When i keg i put the tube at the bottom of the keg and let the beer rise above it very smoothly as not to get O2 in the beer. After hooking up the gas, i purge the keg, 4 or 5 tugs on the release valve. Im wondering if im not purging enough, or am i screwing up somewhere else. When i bottle, my beer taste great, but kegging it sucks. The guy at my local shop says that using starsan, instead of just a line cleaner may be the problem, i disagree. I want to keg because its so much easier, but im sick of ruining batches. What do you guys think?

I recently got a used keg and cleaned it the following way.
- took it apart. Gaskets and all
- soaked everything in oxy cleaner for 24 hours in the keg
- stuck thefkeg upside down in sink with oxy cleaner for another 24 hours
- rinse rinse rinse
- replaced gaskets
- starsan everything for a couple hours
- assembled everything
- filled 1 gallon of oxy cleaner
- used co2 to serve cleaner through tap
- rinsed
- used co2 to rinse line with co2 and clean water
- served a bit more starsan
- filled with brew
Beer tasted fine.
The keg stank before doing this. I guess I went a little crazy cleaning.

Brasco20 said:

Sorry for the hijack, but i have a question about kegging. After having bad tasting beer in my kegs i went back to bottling. 4 days ago i decided to try kegging again. I cleaned the **** out of the keg and line, then sanitized, and kegged the beer. It has the same cardboard flavor that the last one had. When i keg i put the tube at the bottom of the keg and let the beer rise above it very smoothly as not to get O2 in the beer. After hooking up the gas, i purge the keg, 4 or 5 tugs on the release valve. Im wondering if im not purging enough, or am i screwing up somewhere else. When i bottle, my beer taste great, but kegging it sucks. The guy at my local shop says that using starsan, instead of just a line cleaner may be the problem, i disagree. I want to keg because its so much easier, but im sick of ruining batches. What do you guys think?

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If you have not already done so, disassemble the ENTIRE keg and give everything a thorough cleaning. Soak all the pieces in PBW or oxyclean for 24 hours.

There are numerous threads on how to take apart corny kegs. You may also want to toss all the rubber o-rings and replace them. There should be no difference in taste from the keg.

Kegging is fairly easy.
Both bottles and Kegs can be kept at room temperature. Of course you probably do want to chill them both when serving.

You can carbonate both bottle and kegs the same way with priming sugar. Adding in the total amount and sealing and letting it age & carbonate.

With kegs, you can also force carbonate with a co2 tank. There are different methods (you'll see them in the bottling/kegging subforum) such as set& forget at 15psi then serve at 5 psi, or the quick carb at 30psi, then lower the psi.

You don't have to leave the tank attached at any point in time (except for maybe during the force carb process). I disconnect my tank all the time (mostly because I only have one tank, one outlet at the moment and three kegs, and sometimes I just want to avoid testing for leaks since I only have a beer occasionally)

I use oxyclean to clean and starsan to sanitze and haven't had a problem. Others seem to use the same (which is why I'm using it).

Conditioning in a keg might my solution. I can't drop 3 to 4 hundred at once for the setup I want, buy am sick of bottling. I may just buy a couple of kegs for bigger darker brews that will age gracefully, and bottle lighter ones.

That will give time to get a keezer ready.

It should be noted that CO2 absorption does vary with temperature. It will take less time or pressure to carb if cold.

http://www.iancrockett.com/brewing/info/forcecarb.shtml

As for cleaning, don't forget the liquid out connection. Caught myself setting that little plastic piece to the side during my last cleaning and can't for the life of me remember if I usually put it in the oxiclean or not.