Leaky keg?

I am not sure if I have a leaking keg or the beer is absorbing the C02. I am aging my beer in a keg and gave it a shot of C02. The next day I went back and used the relief valve and basically nothing came out. I gave it another shot of C02 and the next day the same thing. Is the beer absorbing my C02 or do I have a leak in the keg. I reseated the lid each time to see, and I bumped up the c02 pressure to like 20 last time to make sure it was seated...

I'm no expert, but it seems unlikely your beer absorbed 20 psi of CO2 overnight.

Normally you can hear a leak from the keg they are quite obvious, at least the ones i have gotten..
And i dont think your beer would absorb that much co2 overnight.
When was the last time your replaced the o-rings?

impetus19 said:

Normally you can hear a leak from the keg they are quite obvious, at least the ones i have gotten..
And i dont think your beer would absorb that much co2 overnight.
When was the last time your replaced the o-rings?

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Brand new Orings and using food grade lube on the orings. Well the keg is full so it is only a little C02, maybe an inch worth. I don't hear the leak, and I didn't hook the C02 tank up to it full time because I am not dispensing it yet and I don't wanna waste a whole tank if it is a leak.

Yes - it was absorbed. Filling the headspace with a quick shot of CO2 at 20 psi isn't very much if you think about it.

Let's say you will ultimately carb your beer to 2.2 volumes. That means that your beer will hold an amount of CO2 that normally would occupy 2.2 times the volume of the beer in the keg if the CO2 was left in a gas state. If you charge up your keg with a quick shot of 14 psi CO2 (equal to roughly one atmosphere of pressure), then you're basically just doubling the amount of gas contained in the headpspace of your keg. That's not much CO2 at all compared how much CO2 will be absorbed when you done carbing it. You probably only added about a pint of CO2.

I agree, once you reach equilibrium then its safe to say it will retain pressure , providing you dont have leak.

Good, but it is good enough to age with, so there is no air in there.

It wouldn't hurt to hit it with 30 psi every now and then.

Sounds good, will do, thanks for your help.

Did you purge the air after adding the CO2? If not then you still have air in it. I normally gas it, wait a few minutes then pull the relief, then gas it again. This pushes the air out since CO2 is heavier than air.

beerthirty said:

Did you purge the air after adding the CO2? If not then you still have air in it. I normally gas it, wait a few minutes then pull the relief, then gas it again. This pushes the air out since CO2 is heavier than air.

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Yes I did that, thanks for the help.