Newbie kegging question

Hello all. I just kegged my first beer into a 2.5 gallon keg. I decided to use priming sugar this time as an experiment. What I did was since I had a 5 gallon batch and wanted to put half of that in my 2.5 gallon keg I used priming sugar for the whole 5 gallons and bottled the other half. I did put 3.5 ounces of priming sugar for the whole 5 gallons. Is this too much for the keg portion? If so is there anything I can do to correct it when I have to?

You should be fine with the 3.5 oz for the whole 5 gallons. Some things I have read seem to want you to put less for kegging but I have used the same amount as when I bottle with perfect carbonation. Hopefully someone could chime in with why you would use less for a keg but the same 5 gallon volume. Maybe something to do with head space?

Watching with interest also since I will be kegging my first brew (5+ gal Irish Red Ale) to two 2.5Gal corny kegs. Since I only have room for one keg in the fridge (RV Keezer) I was planning to use priming sugar in the keg sitting out at room temp.

Robert

revansCAAD8 said:

Watching with interest also since I will be kegging my first brew (5+ gal Irish Red Ale) to two 2.5Gal corny kegs. Since I only have room for one keg in the fridge (RV Keezer) I was planning to use priming sugar in the keg sitting out at room temp.

Robert

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That works well. You can use 1/2 the amount of priming sugar you normally would if you were bottling. For most of my 5 gallon batches, that's 5 ounces of priming sugar for bottling, so I'd use 2.5 ounces for a 5 gallon batch that is being kegged. For a 2.5 gallon keg, I'd use 1.25 ounces in the keg.

I can't explain why but everytime I try and carb in the keg with the same amount as I use for bottling, I always overcarb the keg. I even got beer backing into my air lines on the last keg. This was due to the pressure in the keg being higher than my planned serving pressure. So I plan on either using less corn sugar or completely vent before hooking up a keg. I'll most likely do both.

BullGator said:

I can't explain why but everytime I try and carb in the keg with the same amount as I use for bottling, I always overcarb the keg.

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That's because using the same amount as for bottling is about twice the amount you should use. Next time, back off the amount by 1/2, and it should be perfect. I use 2.5 ounces of priming sugar in 5 gallons for kegging.

Use about 50-60% of the amount you use in a bottle when you naturally carb in a keg.

The reason is what one of the earlier posts was alluding to - a keg filled almost to the top with beer has MUCH less headspace than the aggrigate of the headspace of 55 bottles.

Good luck!

BullGator said:

I can't explain why but everytime I try and carb in the keg with the same amount as I use for bottling, I always overcarb the keg. I even got beer backing into my air lines on the last keg. This was due to the pressure in the keg being higher than my planned serving pressure. So I plan on either using less corn sugar or completely vent before hooking up a keg. I'll most likely do both.

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If you keg with Sugar, it is always a good idea to vent the keg before hooking up the gas just for this reason. I usually put the keg in the fridge for 24hrs, then vent and hook up the gas, but you can just vent it before putting it in and hook it up.

Forgive me for being a newbie kegger with a stupid question. I know what venting means but my question is should I expunge all the way or just some? And also what PSI would I use to just pour from there?

Iceman6409 said:

Forgive me for being a newbie kegger with a stupid question. I know what venting means but my question is should I expunge all the way or just some? And also what PSI would I use to just pour from there?

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I usually vent off all of it by pulling the ring and waiting a few seconds for the hissing to stop. After that I set my regulator to the desired serving pressure (depending on the style) usually 10 to 12 psi for me and hook it up to the keg. It also depends on the temperature you will be serving.