new to kegging (carbonating/conditioning question)

I've been searching this forum for a few days now trying to come to a consensus on this, but there doesn't seem to be a real authoratitive response, so apologies in advance for repeat questions.

A little background - I have the kegconnection.com dual body reg 2 keg kit and 4 cornies from them (it's great btw). I got a 7 cu ft freezer on CL for 50 bucks and there's enough room for 4 cornies and my co2.

So my question is, if I want to be *conditioning* my beer while it's waiting for room to be tapped, what should the pressure be set at (ex: serving pressure)? Do I have to keep it on tap for it to condition? Ideally I want to be able to have my ales ferment for 2 weeks then swap to keg and tap it if there's room.. and if there's not, I can set the pressure and just keep it in the freezer conditioning until it's ready to be tapped.

Thanks in advance.

Once the beer is carbonated, you don't need to keep pressure on it while it's conditioning and waiting to be tapped. Keeping it on the gas won't hurt, but it's not necessary.

-Steve

So if I wanted to condition my keg, I should hook it up to the gas for a week or so at serving pressure, give it a chance to carb, then unhook it and set it aside until it's ready to serve?

ridd said:

So if I wanted to condition my keg, I should hook it up to the gas for a week or so at serving pressure, give it a chance to carb, then unhook it and set it aside until it's ready to serve?

Click to expand...

As long as serving pressure will give you the carbonation level you want, then yeah, you could do that.

-Steve

ridd said:

So if I wanted to condition my keg, I should hook it up to the gas for a week or so at serving pressure, give it a chance to carb, then unhook it and set it aside until it's ready to serve?

Click to expand...

You have several options- probably why there is no consensus!

Option #1-
Carb it up at serving pressure, then take it off the gas until it's time (what you asked).

Option #2-
Use priming sugar, just like a big bottle, and keep it at room temperature until you have a spot in the kegerator. It'll carb up and condition while it's waiting to go into the kegerator.

Option #3-
Keep it at room temperature to condition, and then "quick carb" it when you move it to the kegerator by turning the gas to 30 psi for 36 hours. Then, purge and place at serving pressure.

Option #4-
Get a "distributor" and keep all the tanks at the same serving pressure, all the time.

There is just one thing that I can think of that you may want to consider. Aging slows down considerably when the beer is cold. That's great if you want to keep a beer's flavor profile long term. But, if the beer is green, it'll still be green whether it's carbonated or not. So, you may want to keep the beer at room temperature longer than just the two weeks for fermenting. You may want to keg the beer, and then keep it at room temperature for 2-4 weeks to condition a bit before moving into the kegerator.

I usually leave my beers in the fermenter for 3-4 weeks and then keg them. If they are pretty "small" beers, I go ahead and put them in the kegerator and carb them up. If they are bigger beers, I age them a week or two (or more) at room temperature.

For beers I'm dryhopping, I sometimes use a secondary and then keg from there.

I like option 2 myself - to prime my kegs and then condition for a month or so at room temp before putting them in the kegerator. It only takes about half the priming sugar, and by the time I'm ready to tap them they are aged, carbonated and ready to drink as soon as they reach serving temperature. I figure it might as well be carbonating during the conditioning phase, and your CO2 tank will last over twice as long.

If you don't prime it and it's conditioning outside the fridge, just hit it with enough pressure to seat the lid. Unless you run a CO2 line outside the fridge and keep it hooked up to the keg the whole time, it won't maintain the pressure anyway. When you're ready to chill and tap it, you'll have to either burst carb it or hook it up at serving pressure for 7-10 days to carb it up.

ifishsum said:

I like option 2 myself - to prime my kegs and then condition for a month or so at room temp before putting them in the kegerator. It only takes about half the priming sugar, and by the time I'm ready to tap them they are aged, carbonated and ready to drink as soon as they reach serving temperature. I figure it might as well be carbonating during the conditioning phase, and your CO2 tank will last over twice as long.

If you don't prime it and it's conditioning outside the fridge, just hit it with enough pressure to seat the lid. Unless you run a CO2 line outside the fridge and keep it hooked up to the keg the whole time, it won't maintain the pressure anyway. When you're ready to chill and tap it, you'll have to either burst carb it or hook it up at serving pressure for 7-10 days to carb it up.

Click to expand...

As a piggyback question to this, how exactly do you prime a keg? I really like that idea instead of having them on the CO2, ultimately because it will save money and CO2.

ahitz3 said:

As a piggyback question to this, how exactly do you prime a keg? I really like that idea instead of having them on the CO2, ultimately because it will save money and CO2.

Click to expand...

You just figure out how much priming sugar to use- generally it's 1/2 of what you would use for bottling, so 2.5 ounces in 5 gallons- and simply dissolve that in some boiling water. Put that in the keg, then rack the beer to the keg and close it up. That's it!

I like to give the keg a shot of co2 to check for leaks and to help seat the lid after closing it up. If it's not leaking, the beer will be carbed up in about 2 weeks at room temperature, just like when bottling.