When to drink

How long after I put my beer into a keg do I need to wait to start drinkin?

How long did you age it before? It will be carbonated in about three days of that's what your asking, but if you didn't age it before, the beer might be a little green...

Depends on how you pressurize the keg. I prefer the set and forget type method where you set the CO2 to serving pressure and let it sit for about a week. I've tried other methods and you might sneak ahead a day or two, but in my experience, for the best results and ensure you don't overcarb the beer, I just set it and wait a week.

I say drink a little every day to see how the carbonation levels and flavor changes over time. It'll be educational and you'll learn your system better, and you'll get to decide when it tastes best for future reference. LIke others said, it you just set the regulator at serving pressure it wont be fully carbed for about a week. I find that the beer flavor changes a bit over the next week as well so they are usually best after a couple weeks. but certainly drinkable before that.

I intend to set it to serving pressure, but I should wait a week before I start drinking if I'm understanding correctly

Giving it a week at serving pressure ensures that the CO2 is absorbed throughout the beer evenly, but I like zeekage's idea too. Try it after a day or two and keep trying and see how it changes. I've done this on many batches mostly because I am eager to drink my new batch. After a day or so at serving pressure it will have a lot of head, but not a lot of CO2 in the beer itself, and as time goes in it will become more saturated into the beer. I have enough of a pipeline now where I just hook it up, forget about it for a week, and by the time I'm ready to drink the new batch, its ready.

If its a weekend and I'm out of town I'll start around 1PM typically though I usually start drinking after 6PM.

It usually carbs up in a few days, with the "full" carbonation in about 10 days or so.

You can drink it anytime, but it's better when it's carbed up! :cross:

So if I'm understanding correctly, that additional time required when you bottle, is not required when you keg? So once fermentation and everything is done and I put it in the keg, once it's cold an carbed I can drink it ....right? This is my first batch so I guess I'm more than a little anxious to try it, and perhaps I may have been a bit over ambitious when selecting a black IPA for my first batch lol

The time required when bottling is needed for the yeast to eat up the priming sugar and produce the co2 needed to force carbonate the bottles.

When kegging the yeast step is skipped and you're just forcing co2 into solution directly so yeah it can be quicker. Really depends how you do it. And who says you "can't" drink your beer till a certain time. It's your beer! Drink it whenever you want! At least sample from the keg regularly when it's carbonating so that you learn more how the flavor changes and meld as time goes on. You'll also learn how long it takes to carbonate fully if you sample often!

once it's cold an carbed I can drink it ....right

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You don't even have to wait for that, you can drink it warm and uncarbonated. Now, did you just want to drink beer or did you want to drink good tasting beer? You didn't tell us how long it had been in the fermenter of if it had been secondaried or even what kind of beer it was so how can we tell you when it will be good? I've had beers that were good to drink 3 weeks from pitching the yeast and some that took more than 3 months.

It says after dry hopping to let it sit seven days before bottling, so does that mean its ready for the keg seven days after dry hopping?

The recipe says to wait seven days after dry hopping before bottling, so does that mean in seven days it's ready for the keg?

It's a black IPA, it's been fermenting for 10 days, I added dry hops 2 days ago(as the recipe said)

With the dark grains I'm going to suggest that a month in the keg will get you good beer. It may happen a little sooner or a little later.

A month huh...that's a loooong time to not drink it lol...I suppose I could start up another batch in the meantime