Naturally carbing in the keg question

Hey everyone,

I have been trying to figure this out. I want to naturally carb my next keg but I'm confused. When I add the priming sugar and purge the headspace, do I keep it hooked up to CO2 while it's carbing?

The reason I ask is because I keep a keg of star San on handand I have tried to pressurize that and I know the keg seals but the co2 is absorbed (at room temp) and the keg loses its pressure over night if I hit it and seal it with 30 psi.

If your priming with sugar yeast will eat the sugar giving you the co2 to keep the keg pressurized. You only need to keep it hooked up to co2 for maintaining the pressure while your dispensing. If your going to just use co2 to carbonate you would need to keep it hooked up all the time as the beer will absorb the co2 into solution. Keep in mind though you will need less sugar to prime the keg than you would use if bottling the batch as there is less headspace in the keg than there would be split amongst all the bottles. Search for priming sugar calculators to figure out how much is appropriate.

Right, I understand that part but I'm afraid that before the pressure builds from the natural carb the keg will lose pressure.

I do it all the time. 3oz of cane or corn sugar, seal the lid with 30psi and purge the air, let it sit at room temp about 3 weeks, chill and serve.

WDT said:

Right, I understand that part but I'm afraid that before the pressure builds from the natural carb the keg will lose pressure.

Click to expand...

Unless you drop the temp of the beer several degrees and create negative pressure in the keg, it should be fine. If you've just cold crashed the beer and are now wanting to carb at room temp, you'll need to wait until it's warmed up.

If your keg of star san is losing pressure that quickly at room temp, chances are you have a leak

edit: to clarify, you would expect it to lose some pressure, but not enough to negate the seal on the keg. Like JuanMoore said, you don't need to keep a lot of positive pressure for it to hold a seal. If you do, chances are your seal isn't great.