Room Temp Force Carbing

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mazultav

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Hello All,

As my first batch nears completion my mind moves to packaging. I have not been able to find a good CL score for a fridge yet. However I've had a 5lb CO2 tank for a while. Would it be worth it to get the tank filled, but a used corny. Then force carb that at room temp, and then bottle using a DIY beer gun, probably into bombers or 750s.

I also have a 1 gallon glass jug I've been using for an little experimental smoked beer and I like the smaller size for experimenting. I would like to use a DIY 3L soda bottle keg for the little guy and could carb that with a tank as well.

Plus a corny takes up less sq ft than 5 cases of bottles and I could use it as another primary/secondary in a pinch.

Are there any downsides to this idea? Thanks all.
 
if you are getting yourself a corny, why not keep the beer in the keg? carb it up, let it sit, and when you can, chill it for serving. (it holds two cases).

I've put automotive tire stems into plastic caps for 3-litre soda bottles to charge them, too.

If you have to bottle, people do say that the beer guns are great.
 
If you are going to put it into bottles anyway I would use a bottling bucket and priming sugar.

I have a beer gun and it is great for a couple of bottles to take here and there but I wouldn't do whole batch. For the beer gun to work right you need to chill your bottles to beer temp. It is made for alreay chilled beer. Using a corney as a conditioning vessel or to age your beer at room temp is fine. When I don't have enough room for a keg I will fill it put a layer of CO2 on it and store at room temp. I don't force carb it though until I am ready to have it on tap.
 
Thanks for the quick replies guys.

rwinzing is there any downside to force carbing at room temp. I would guess I would need a higher psi to begin with as the warm beer would not take co2 into soultion as readily as colder.

I guess I was just wondering if I could carbonate in bulk, then transfer into the smaller contained of my choosing for chilling and serving when I needed it. I plan to go full keg when I can find a good fridge on CL or some otherway. I was just looking for a stop gap.
 
depending on what "room temp" is, you might not even get it to carb.

i think this is a recipe for over-carbing, when you eventually chill the keg down.
 
I don't know about the whole bottling thing, but you can definitely force carb at room temp.

Beersmith says that for 2.4 volumes, at 68°F, you need around 26 PSI. Hold it there for a week or two, and you will be correctly carbonated.

To PREVENT overcarbonation, when you CHILL the beer, you'll need to drop pressure, (10 PSI for 2.4 vol at 38°F, for example). The tricky part is dropping pressure at the same rate of chilling. To get around this, disconnect the gas from the keg before you chill. You could vent some pressure, (since the keg will still be at 26 PSI), but this won't really matter, as the extra bit of CO2 in the keg headspace will only add 0.1 volumes or so to the end product. Chill the beer, then hook up the CO2 at the correct pressure for chilled beer (say, 10-12 PSI).

Carbonation is simply an equilibrium situation. You will have the same amount of CO2 in your beer at 68F and 26 PSI as you will at 38F and 10 PSI...or anywhere in between.
 
I guess I was just wondering if I could carbonate in bulk, then transfer into the smaller contained of my choosing for chilling and serving when I needed it.

Carbonating at room temp is fine, you just use higher pressure as shortyjacobs said.

That said, the quoted statement is where you could run into problems. Trying to transfer fully carbonated beer at room temp is going to be an exercise in futility, as it's going to want to foam like mad.
 
Why not just get it cold old school way when you want to drink. A tub, water, and ice. May not be ideal but it works.
 
yeah, you'll have foam issues and loss of carbonation trying to fill bottles with room temp beer.
 

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