I am using 3/16" for the beer line.
Before using the keg for the first time I filled with a saniclean solution, hooked up the gas, checked for leaks, and dispensed the saniclean through the cobra faucet.
I just finished reading some old post on purging, sounds like I may have screwed up by not purging the oxygen out as soon as I connected the gas. It's only been 2 days, hopefully if i purge when I get home the beer will still be drinkable.
JonClayton:
Relax!
It's not rocket science...
O2 is bad for your beer. Beer is bad for your liver. But your liver doesn't explode if you drink a beer. It takes a
lot of beer, and a long time.
Same with O2 in my experience. I've never let a keg sit for more than a month - but in that time I've never noticed a problem that I would attribute to O2.
My kegging day goes like this:
- Take the lid off of a sanitized keg
- Rack beer into it
- Replace the lid
- Pressurize with 30 PSI to seal, purging a few times
- Put it in the fridge at serving pressure for 2 to 3 weeks to carb
- Enjoy
If the beer needs time to age it goes like this:
- Take the lid off of a sanitized keg
- Rack beer into it
- Replace the lid
- Pressurize with 30 PSI to seal, purging a few times
- Remove gas, let it age at room temp
- After it's aged long enough - get another sanitized keg (Lid on this time)
- Hook up a jumper line from "Out to Out" on the 2 kegs (Black QD's on both ends)
- Apply 3 PSI to the full (aging) keg
- Open the relief on the empty (serving) keg
- Beer goes from aging keg to serving keg, leaving most of the trub behind.
- Put the serving keg (now full) in the fridge at serving pressure for 2 to 3 weeks to carb
- Enjoy
The threads you have read about the pressure changing when you put the CO2 in the fridge are referring to the pressure in the bottle. When mine is warm, it reads around 600 PSI. In the fridge it's around 450 and almost to the "Refill" mark on the gauge. IMO the high pressure gauges should be removed and capped! The tank will read the same pressure, until ALL of the liquid CO2 is gone.
Then it will drop to 0 PSI very quickly. That gauge is useful for all of 1/2 a day right before a refill. Otherwise ignore it.
Don't worry about keeping the tank warm or cold. If you're worried about the regulator changing pressure, install secondary regulators inside your fridge to handle the final pressure on your kegs. I'm not worried, so I don't...
Use keg lube to lubricate and seal all o-rings. Always. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than re-filling a tank of gas a week after you bought it because of a little leak.
ravsta:
Always keep the gas hooked up. The carbonating beer will keep absorbing CO2 until the gas reaches equilibrium - If you're shooting for 2 volumes, for instance, you need to let the beer absorb 10 gallons of CO2. Far more than you trap in the headspace of the full keg at 30 PSI.