Kegging without Co2

I picked up 2 soda kegs recently, but don't have the co2 and regulator, and won't be able to get them for a litle while. My question is:

Can you keg naturally and still use the kegs (with pin lock and picnic tap only), and can it also be cleaned and sanitized the same way? Thanks for your responses!!

Using just the keg, you can naturally carbonate your beer by adding corn sugar, just think of the keg as one giant bottle. The problem you run into is that you won't have any way of forcing the beer out of the keg. In addition to adding gas to the beer the CO2 tank fills the keg with air and forces the beer out. There might be ways around this, but essentially opening up the keg to get the beer and not replacing the pressure via a CO2 tank is like opening a huge 5 gallon bottle of beer, it will go flat pretty quickly.

Good luck.

As donasay said, you can naturally carb the keg but you will need CO2 to push it.

An option is this: http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=1197 There is a thread review/discussing this...all positives.

In the long run it will be cheaper to buy a tank and regulator, but if you aren't planning on kegging a lot or look to keep cost down at the moment it will work well. But, keep an eye on craigslist as regulators and CO2 tanks might pop up cheap.

I think you may also run into a prolem creating a proper seal. Co2 is used to put pressure on the lid and give a good seal.

tbulger said:

I think you may also run into a prolem creating a proper seal. Co2 is used to put pressure on the lid and give a good seal.

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If you can drop the temp on the beer some before racking to the keg and then let it warm up, CO2 will come out of solution and create a nice seal. You can also use that charger to put it under a little pressure and seal it up.

The chargers are OK but you'll go through $50 worth of chargers in a couple cornies and you're already at the craigslist good deal price of a tank and reg.

Bobby_M said:

The chargers are OK but you'll go through $50 worth of chargers in a couple cornies and you're already at the craigslist good deal price of a tank and reg.

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Buy one of the chargers for now, then plan to buy/rent a CO2 tank and regulator for later.

You can usually find the chargers for about $13 and a pack of 25 CO2 cartridges for pellet rifles is only about $12 at Kmart. If you carb naturally, you'll only use about 2 cartridges to push an entire corney of beer. That's about $1 a corney. Also, you'll have a back-up for your tank if you ever run out and need some in a hurry.

Don't get me wrong. I have and love the charger but the best price I've found on carts is Walmart so far and they're just under $1 each in packs of 10. I wouldn't bother kegging though if I had to sugar carb them though because you get the same yeasty flavor, at least in the relatively short term, as you do with bottles. It subsides after sitting in the cold a while, but I like force carbing so much better.

I agree though, get the charger now but search craigslist daily for a CO2 bottle and reg.

Bobby_M said:

Don't get me wrong. I have and love the charger but the best price I've found on carts is Walmart so far and they're just under $1 each in packs of 10. I wouldn't bother kegging though if I had to sugar carb them though because you get the same yeasty flavor, at least in the relatively short term, as you do with bottles. It subsides after sitting in the cold a while, but I like force carbing so much better.

I agree though, get the charger now but search craigslist daily for a CO2 bottle and reg.

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Personally, I don't care for carbing naturally in a keg. I agree, you get the same trub/yeast you do with a bottle, at least initially, which is one of the main reasons why I keg. But, some people to swear by only carbing naturally.