Room temperature keg

Hey guys, I tapped a keg and stuck it in my kegerator last night hoping to enjoy it this afternoon. I just realized, that like a big idiot, I forgot to plug my kegerator in. I just turned it on and put it on the lowest setting. How long do you all think it will take my room temperature 1/2 barrel keg to reach drinking temp?

Id say a good day or so. Thats a lot of volume to cool down 30 degrees.

Do you have any growlers or a pitcher? If so just fill them up and then cool them down. The smaller volume will cool much faster.

if it were me i'd take regular samples from the tap to figure this out for yourself... but that's just me...

If it were submerged in an ice-water bath it would cool quicker, but guessing that's not real feasible for you. I second the notion of filling a growler or mason jar and cooling that, though you might want to turn your serving pressure down since the beer is warm or you could get a fair bit of foam.

Is it already carbed?

TopherM said:

Is it already carbed?

Click to expand...

I got the impression it was a commercial keg.

Gotcha! Yeah, your best bet is to throw it in an ice bath. A room temp commercial keg has a ton of thermal mass, and it's going to take a while to cool down.

BTW, commercial kegs are delivered cool with the CO2 dissolved into the solution. When your keg was warmed to room temp, much of that CO2 came out of solution and is now in the headspace of the keg.

You can quick cool this thing, but it is going to take a good 48 hours under 40F to get all of that CO2 dissolved back into the beer. If you quick cool this and serve it tomorrow, get ready for REALLY foamy beer from the CO2 in the headspace of the keg agitating the nucleation sites on the surface of the beer. You are going to get pours that are 50-75% foam with actual beer that tastes almost flat, no matter how slowly you pour it. Nothing you can really do but give it time.