What to do? Kegging Question.

I am kegging a Honey Wheat next Friday. Should I force carb at 30 psi for 3 days...or carb at 10 psi (closer to serving psi) for a week before drinking? I've heard different things. What do you guys do? There are alot of ways to skin a cat, so I appreciate all the advice and why it works for you.

P.S. This will be my first attempt at kegging my homebrew. Hopefully, I don't screw it up as I have offered to bring the keg to a back to school teachers party on Saturday, Aug. 19th.

Go for the 10 for a week, no worrys about overcarb.

I do the patient method. It produces the best, most repeatable results, and there is no risk of over carbonating your beer. After you carefully sanitize your receiving keg, put the lid on and attach your gas line, open the relief valve on the lid, set your regulator to 5 psi and purge the keg with CO2 for about a minute to be sure all the air is removed. This will give you a nice blanket of CO2 onto which you can rack your beer without fear of oxidation.

Now remove the lid and with the transfer tubing sitting at the bottom of the keg, rack your beer over. Now replace the keg lid and again connect your gas line and with the regulator still set to 5 psi, "burp" the relief valve 2 or 3 times to make sure there is no air in the head space.

Turn the regulator up to 25 psi or so to seal the lid. Remove the gas and chill in the fridge to serving temp for at least 24 hours. Now connect the gas line and set it to your desired serving pressure and leave it like that in the fridge until it reaches a state of equilibrium, usually about a week. This will also allow your beer to mature a little too while it cold conditions.

Remember that you will also need to ensure that the system be balanced with the proper length of beer line so that you don't just pour glasses of foam. 3/16" ID beer line will drop the pressure about 2 psi/ft. If your serving pressure is 10 psi, you will need at least 5' of 3/16" ID beer line.

Here are some great resources to check out.

John

Soda Keg Maintenance

Cornelius Kegging System Instructions

Troubleshooting Draft Systems

Force Carbonating

Draft System Line Balancing

Thanks, John, very thorough reply!

Taken from one of the links you provided:
http://www.homebrew.com/articles/article12018101.shtml
The amount of CO2 that will be absorbed...Generally ales tend to be carbonated at the lower end, 1.9 to around 2.3; most German style lagers at around 2.4 to 2.7; and American lagers, Japanese lagers, and wheat beers at around 2.7 to 3.0.


I did not know this:
Remember that the gas should be connected to the black beverage disconnect so that the CO2 bubbles up through the beer.

So when carbing the beer, I attach my gray gas connect to the black beverage pin?????

So, since it is a HONEY WHEAT that is being kegged, I'm looking at say 2.7. Hence, to do this I would need to set the regulator at 15psi if my fridge is 40 degrees. Correct (If I am reading the chart right)? It means I'll also need close to 5-7 foot of hose for dispense. The HBS guy sold me a 1' beer line?

Born Brewing Co. said:

I did not know this:
Remember that the gas should be connected to the black beverage disconnect so that the CO2 bubbles up through the beer.

So when carbing the beer, I attach my gray gas connect to the black beverage pin?????

Click to expand...

This is not really needed. They way gasses work, it is not required that you 'bubble up' the CO2. It may speed the process but if you apply 10 lbs of pressure against your beer (through the normal grey connector) it will carbonate over the course of a week. Since I like to age my beers for more than a week (most of my beers I like to age for a month or more) carbonating the slow way isn't even an inconvienence.

I don't think of kegging as a way to make beer faster (which it isn't). I think of it as a way to make it easier (which it is).

Jason, do you drink a lot of New Glarus? Every time I get up to Wisconsin I pick up a few cases. The raspberry and cherry tart is incredible!
I'm also diggin' your oval homebrew stickers!!


I will just carb through the normal carb connect for a week.

Thanks guys.

Born Brewing Co. said:

The HBS guy sold me a 1' beer line?

Click to expand...

It still amazes me how many bad HBS store owners/employees there are...........

They do more harm for the hobby than good.

1' of hose will be useless.

Mikey said:

1' of hose will be useless.

Click to expand...

That's what I thought as I was buying $100 worth of three way CO2 convertor, hoses, CO2 and beer connectors and such, but was too polite to question the hose length. Anyway, I'm gonna go back to HBS and exchange for the 5' setup The frustrating part is I knew I needed longer hose, but I asked for their opinion on they sold the 1' line. I figured, hell, you're the homebrew guru...OK. Though, I've been brewing for a year this is the first time kegging and don't want to mess up the mcgillicutty!

Born Brewing Co. said:

So when carbing the beer, I attach my gray gas connect to the black beverage pin?????

Click to expand...

As kornkob said, it is not necessary to carb the keg through the beverage out (black QD) to have the CO2 enter through the diptube. It can speed up the process, but you risk having beer enter your gas line and potentially, your regulator. The gas hooked to the gas line will take more time to carb, but it will work out fine.

John

Born Brewing Co. said:

Jason, do you drink a lot of New Glarus? Every time I get up to Wisconsin I pick up a few cases. The raspberry and cherry tart is incredible!
I'm also diggin' your oval homebrew stickers!!


I will just carb through the normal carb connect for a week.

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

MMMM, New Glarus!! Road Slush, Uff-Da, Cherry Bock, Belgian Red, Hop Hearty...heck...I even like the light stuff...Naked and Yokel.

Born Brewing Co. said:

Jason, do you drink a lot of New Glarus? Every time I get up to Wisconsin I pick up a few cases. The raspberry and cherry tart is incredible!
I'm also diggin' your oval homebrew stickers!!

Click to expand...

New Glarus has some good stuff but I find Capital Brewery (based in Madison/Middleton) to be what I more frequently drink when I'm out. But I do buy the Raspberrry and Cherry tarts as they not only taste good but make excellent gifts to people who typically don't drink beer.