want to be a kegger...

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colinwollmann

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Hi Brewers,I got a question about kegs.I bottle all my brew now ,but would like to start kegging.I was wondering how long it takes to condition beer in kegs?I brew only Ales,so no lagering for me yet .Usually I have to age my bottles of beer about 3 to 4 weeks.I was wanting to know what the timetable is for kegs.

BTW...I'm an all grain brewer.

Brew On ...

Colin..........GO SENS GO!!!!!!
 
Kegging saves you no conditioning time. Now, you can force-carb a beer in a short period of time (a few hours if you're determined enough), but you'll be force-carbing a green beer. It still will need the usual amount of conditioning time.
 
Though... if the beer has been conditioned in the secondary long enough and or cold conditioned.. then you can pretty much drink it once it's carbed. That said, I still find them better about 10 days in.

Now I've opened a can of worms involving the neccessity of carbonic acid in order for a beer to really condition... :D
 
The bird is right on the money. The hardest thing about kegging is resisting the urge to drink the green stuff!
 
Here's one thing I have been stuggling with when considering going to kegging. And I know that I am asking the fox to guard the hen house and all that but....Isn't beer in kegs a little excessive....
 
WormBoy said:
Here's one thing I have been stuggling with when considering going to kegging. And I know that I am asking the fox to guard the hen house and all that but....Isn't beer in kegs a little excessive....

:confused:

What do you mean? Excessive how? :confused:
 
jpuf said:
The bird is right on the money. The hardest thing about kegging is resisting the urge to drink the green stuff!

I totally had this problem when I started kegging with the 30PSI 3min deal to carb. I find that if I just put the keg in the rator with 12-13psi and leave it for a week or two, it'll be nicely carbed and I don't drink it greenish. Then again, I also keep a backlog now to avoid the whole deal.
 
WormBoy said:
Here's one thing I have been stuggling with when considering going to kegging. And I know that I am asking the fox to guard the hen house and all that but....Isn't beer in kegs a little excessive....

I don't know.... I do know that I found cleaning, filling, capping, and storing all those bottles to be excessive though.:D


For me personally, I need to have some hobbies to work on to keep me happy, building a kegerator just seemed like a fun thing to do.

Guess what? I was right:ban:
 
Dennys Fine Consumptibles said:
Having 60+ full bottles laying in your closet is any less "excessive"???


I have about 200 just now! and 5 gallons to be bottled in 1 week.
I consider that not to be enough! 100 of those are big beers though.

60 is NOTHING. 2 weeks supply. ...if that!
 
homebrewer_99 said:
Why is is I keep a keg at 40F for 5 days at 30 psi and I have no carbonation?:mad: There's a head, but no bubbles...where are my bubbles???

No, I don't have any leaks either...


Uh.. beer line to short? (not sure how long you've been a keggin' so dumb question must be asked)
 
Yah, the whole bottle collection, cleaning, label removal, sanitation does involve many steps. However, my wife doesn't drink, and I drink about 6 to 10 beers a week maybe. Friends over occasionaly. A heavy drinking party rarely. Based on this consumption, I am trying to way the practicality of kegging. I guess I always eqauated kegs with large quantity consumption. Maybe this is a wrong impression. How often is the maintenance on a since three log system lets say? If it isn't often that I need to clean all the lines and such, I suppose it makes no difference. Except that instead of browsing through eight or ten batches of bottles to see what to chill and drink, I am limited to the number of logs that my system can accomodate. I guess everything has its pros and cons.
 
that may be how it works for you, but it doesn't really make sense to me. I had thought it is all about pressure, so i would think a keg that is at 2/3 full and a keg all the way full that are both on pressure constantly should carbonate at the same rate, and also overtime, the keg shouldn't overcarbonate either.

now if you pressurize then take off the gas, then what you are saying makes sense as far as carbonation, because there will be more gas in the headspace of the 2/3 full keg, and more will be absorbed into solution to equalize, where the full keg will equalize very quickly and 'use up' most of the co2 in the small headspace very quickly.

but i am not a physicist...
 
BierMuncher said:
I find that a full keg ( I mean really full...just below the gas in tube) doesn't have enough head space to hold a "reserve" of CO2 gas and that gas pocket is what is absorbed into the liquid. Purely conjecture on my part, but I'd guess if you had the same scenario with a 2/3rds full keg, the outcome would be much different.

CO2 needs to normalize between the headspace of the keg and the liquid. With minimal headspace, it will simply take longer.

Anecdotally, I find that as my keg gets consumed, I need to decreased the serving pressure a bit because the growing amount of headspace lends to a bit of overcarbonation.

Again, I haven't been drinking this morning so I might not sound as eloquent as my usual 3-homebrew self....;)
I appreciate the replies. Thanks. You too gnef. OK, my kegs are full minus a sample or two.

I checked (took a sample) from 2 last night. They both had head, but one did not have any bubbles insolution and the other had maybe 10 then stopped.

Now when I bottle my Hefe Weizens I have an "aquarium of bubbles" all the way to the bottom of the glass. Really effervescent as they should be.

If I had 1/2 of those bubbles I'b be happy about it. Right now they don't taste flat, more like an ale from the pub.

I've tapped into my 7th keg and they've all been the same, even the HWs.

I can see changing out the 5' hose for one that's 8' or so for the HW, but we all have a friend who...?? Anyway, my friend says he de-gasses, then puts 1-2 psi on the gage, opens up his tap and lets it flow while he adjusts the gage for higher/lower pressure. Once he's satisfied with the flow he stops adjusting. Says it works for him all the time regardless of the hose length.

I'll just keep it on gas longer and see that happens.

Wait, I just thought of something...I am using a QD on a 2 ' hose with a cobra tap to remove samples...would that matter?:confused:

Sorry about hijacking your thread Collin, but I thought more clarification on kegging would help all.
 
The size of the headspace should have no impact whatsoever on the speed at which CO2 is absorbed into the beer because pressure is pressure and it's always replaced if you leave the valve open. The only thing that matters is surface area between the two and how much beer you're trying to carb. Another thing to consider is that the beer deeper into the keg isn't close to the beer/gas threshold. What that means is that the beer up at the top gets saturated pretty quick but the section where the beer is drawn isn't quite there yet. Even a moderate shake would speed it up.


A 2 foot line on any kind of faucet is going to be a huge pressure drop and it will lose a lot of carbonatioin.
 
So what you are implying is that my short "sample taking" hose is too short, the beer may already be carbonated but my short hose is stripping the carbonation out before it hits the glass?

Maybe my hose needs to be 6' long to deliver a good beer sample?
 
Bobby_M said:
A 2 foot line on any kind of faucet is going to be a huge pressure drop and it will lose a lot of carbonatioin.

I think this is what I'm running into. My HBS set me up with a line that's probably only three feet long (picnic taps), and I seem to get a TON of foam even with the regulator set fairly low. I'm going to try a longer line and see how much of a difference this makes.
 
only thing with picnic tap setup is to keep the lines cold. a warm line will foam just as much as a short line.
 
I would assume the line is inside the fridge with the keg, but yeah, good point. Also, you can add some resistance to any line by holding the faucet up as high above the keg as your line (or your reach) will allow.
 
WormBoy said:
I guess I always eqauated kegs with large quantity consumption.
Whether you put your 5-gal batch in 7-oz bottles, 12-oz bottles, 22-oz bottles, or kegs...it's still 5 gallons.

WormBoy said:
How often is the maintenance on a since three log system lets say? If it isn't often that I need to clean all the lines and such, I suppose it makes no difference.
I spend a lot less time on keg/kegerator cleaning and maintenance than I used to spend dealing with bottles. YMMV

WormBoy said:
Yah, the whole bottle collection, cleaning, label removal, sanitation does involve many steps.

Don't forget filling. I can fill a keg and put everything away in maybe 10 minutes. You'll still be getting your bottles lined up :)

WormBoy said:
Except that instead of browsing through eight or ten batches of bottles to see what to chill and drink, I am limited to the number of logs that my system can accomodate. I guess everything has its pros and cons.

True enough. I get around this somewhat by having other kegs cold and ready to go ('course I have a separate fridge for that), and can quickly change them out of the kegerator...or tap them with a picnic tap.

To me the trade-off is upfront investment of time/money (for kegging) vs. more time spent per batch (for bottling).
 
the_bird said:
I think this is what I'm running into. My HBS set me up with a line that's probably only three feet long (picnic taps), and I seem to get a TON of foam even with the regulator set fairly low. I'm going to try a longer line and see how much of a difference this makes.

It'll help...I just put together picnic taps with 5', 7' and 10' of 3/16" ID hose, to use on the "backup" kegs that don't fit in the kegerator.

10' gives me a great pour on a hefe at 20+ PSI...
 
So, I went back to the HBS tonight, and among eight thousand other things bought a six-foot section of tubing to try as my beer line. The guys there (who know what they're talking about) tried to convince me that I need to go SHORTER (like, a foot or two) to minimize foaming... the complete opposite of what EVERYONE else I've ever heard recommends. Bought the tubing anyway, of course :D
 
the_bird said:
So, I went back to the HBS tonight, and among eight thousand other things bought a six-foot section of tubing to try as my beer line. The guys there (who know what they're talking about) tried to convince me that I need to go SHORTER (like, a foot or two) to minimize foaming... the complete opposite of what EVERYONE else I've ever heard recommends. Bought the tubing anyway, of course :D


That's just...too..funny/sad (both?).
 
the_bird said:
So, I went back to the HBS tonight, and among eight thousand other things bought a six-foot section of tubing to try as my beer line. The guys there (who know what they're talking about) tried to convince me that I need to go SHORTER (like, a foot or two) to minimize foaming... the complete opposite of what EVERYONE else I've ever heard recommends. Bought the tubing anyway, of course :D

Yes, shorter lines are better. If you just apply your mouth directly to the "out" valve, you will get a perfect pour every time, although not one that you can share with guests...well, most guests.
 
ROFL!!!!!! My 3/4 inch hose works GREAT!!!!! naw, I always start at about 6' of 3/16 then cut it back a bit if I have to. Never had to though. Once you dial in your system, I doubt you will ever play with it again (unless you want a diff volume of co2)
 
My 3/16 lines are 7 footers. They work for basically everything.

I have to replace on line due to an experiment last year with peppermint extract in a beer. Damn line still leaves a minty taste. Tried everything to get rid of it. I can only use 2 out of 3 faucets anyway due to mini fridge size.

So I'll replace that line with some 5 or 6 foot for low carb stouts, though I need a second reg for that too.
 
keging is the best ! it allows you to have what you want when you want. 26 0z or 13.5 oz. waste not or you wont have any later.
 
I will be set up for seving at at least two different pressures, so I'll have to dial in twice and keep separate lines for the different pressures. What's ideal for a hefeweizen? 12PSI? 15PSI?
 
pressure is dependent on temperature for volumes of co2. question is, how many volumes of co2 do you want?
 
the_bird said:
I will be set up for seving at at least two different pressures, so I'll have to dial in twice and keep separate lines for the different pressures. What's ideal for a hefeweizen? 12PSI? 15PSI?

Bird, check out this page. Helped me a lot.

Assuming 40F and a 2-foot rise on your tap, if you want 4.0 volumes of CO2 in your hefe, you need 28 (!) PSI in the keg, and about 10' of 3/16" ID line...
 
Denny's Evil Concotions said:
I find 4 vloumes to be a bit high myself. I drinkem around 3 vols

Yeah, I don't drink'em that high either, for a number of reasons. Just picked a random number somewhere in the middle of the "published" guidelines for the style as an example
 
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