Newbie Kegging Question..

Hey all HBTers,

I hope you are all doing well today.

I recently was at my local hbsupply and picked up a corny keg, regulator, picnic tap and the lines to run to the co2 tank, and a beer gun for bottling. I know there is a pretty easy way to build one, but I am very busy w/my last yr of school and don't have time to tinker a lot if prefab stuff is available. I will probably build one in the future though, and possibly do a comparison thread.

Besides beer, I have some sparkling wine which I need to carbonate and bottle.

Does whatever I'm carbonating need to be cold? The owner of the hbs told me that it needs to be cold when I am bottling it, but that it will it carb OK @ rt, is this correct?

What psi would you recommend for sparkling wine? I was told ~12 for beer and the same for wine, but its nice to get some other opinions.


Thanks

B

Well, I have been wrong about wine before but as far as force kegging from a CO2 tank is concerned temp effects the PSI at which you want to carb your wine/beer at. If you are bottle priming, again, I don't see a reason as to why the temp at which you bottle would be a concern. I imagine there are other people out there that don't have the option of cooling their wine in bulk so it seems to me that the guy was giving you the optimum way of carbing and not the only way. I have bottle primed beer at 40 on many occasions so it would be fine to do that. As far as wine goes maybe somebody like Yooperbrew will jump in and verify or tell you differently.

Here's a brief table showing what pressure to carb at depending on temperature. There are better ones out there that are FAR more extensive but it's getting late and this one took me 5 minutes to find.

BT - "Souping Up Your Brewing setup" Sidebar

In force carbonation, all things being equal, the colder the solution the less pressure you need to apply to get the volume of CO2 desired.

So, say you want 2 volumes of CO2 in the fluid. At 50 degrees you would need to apply 10 PSI. At 32 degrees you would only need 3 PSI. It's the same reason that warm pop goes flat so much quicker than cold pop. The warmer the fluid the harder it is to keep or absorb CO2.

Thanks devaspawn and mmb

B

So, if I am going to carb at RT I would need to use 20lb(for ex) pressure co2 to carb. Would I take it off of the co2 when I chill it? Would I drop the pressure before or after it is chilled.

Since I don't have a fridge for this project right now, I plan on force carbing at rt, and then chilling in an ice bath to get it cold for bottling, so any advice is much appreciate.

Thanks

B

How are you planning to carb? Are you going to let it carb over time or force carb. If you force carb, once you are done shaking the crap out of the keg and forcing the CO2 into solution, you can just disconnect the CO2 when you are done. If you are carbing over 2 or 3 weeks without shaking the keg then... all that long @ss explanation to say, yes, after it's carbed at RT disconnect the tank before you cool the keg.