Adding Priming Sugar if you are Kegging?

New to this, but this site looks really good. I've only made a couple of small batches so far (the cheap Mr. Beer Kits), and I just upgraded to a larger 5 Gallon kit. This is a dumb question, but my question is in the future, I might be interested in kegging my beer. I know that you use the priming sugar in the beer when you get ready to bottle for the carbonation. If I am going to keg it, do you still need to add the priming sugar if you are going to force carbonate your beer?

If you're going to force carb with CO2, then no, you do not have to use priming sugar. Some people do still carb their beer in the keg with sugar before hooking it up to the gas to serve, but you don't have to by any means.

One or the other.

As marubozo states you don't have to prime your kegged beer but you can. Google "cask conditioned ale" or "real ale" for more information.

GT

if i ever get ahead of my pipeline i plan to prime kegs with sugar. This way I can age/condition while carbing. Then when a keg bites it, i have a carbed/condition soldier ready to chill.

Keep in mind, if you force carb in a keg it should be cold, but carbing with sugar the keg should be warm. You can also use malt in place of sugar to carb.

JNye said:

if i ever get ahead of my pipeline i plan to prime kegs with sugar. This way I can age/condition while carbing. Then when a keg bites it, i have a carbed/condition soldier ready to chill.

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+1 on JNye. I have a two tap kegarator. If one is open, I force carb. But usually they both have beer on them, so I prime with sugar and let them condition. Once one of them is kicked, the other goes right in. Just let it get cold, and your good to go.

Keep in mind that if you are carbing with sugar in the keg, you use Half the amount of sugar you would use for bottling!

I am planning to keg 4 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon corney. If I prime with sugar prior to connecting to the keg should I try to purge the open space with CO2 or wait for several weeks until the sugar has done its thing?

This will be my first effort into kegging and would love to know some of the best steps to follow. I am in no rush to drink the beer before it is ready.

another tactic is to keep about 2 liters of the original wort and and use that as a "priming sugar". The trick is to keep it cool and sterile. I might try this in the future, just read about it recently. It keeps you from adding anything "outside" the recipe and is pretty common in german brewing. You reserve the wart after cooling but before pitching the yeast. I plan on just keeping it in a sanitized 2-liter in the back of the fridge until needed.

Alternately you can use 2 liters of wort from your next batch to prime your previous batch. Obviously beer styles have to be compatible to do that, but it allows you to get around having to worry about keeping 2 liters of wort from going south on you while you wait for the full batch to ferment.

If you force carbonate you dont need to do any of that.

I like the simplicity of going from carboy to keg and throwing it on C02 for a week.

No bottling bucket to clean, no sugar solution to mix.

Kahuna said:

I like the simplicity of going from carboy to keg and throwing it on C02 for a week.

No bottling bucket to clean, no sugar solution to mix.

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I just boil the priming sugar in some water,let it cool, add it to the keg, and thats it. no bottleing bucket, no mess.