multiple kegs but only one co2 tank... hmmm??

If I have 4 kegs and one co2 tank.... how can I carb up my second keg with my first keg already filled with the co2 tank connected to that keg? My only thought is hooking it up to my 4 way air manifold and carbing it inside my chest freezer where my first keg is...

what do you guys do that only have one co2 tank?? should I splurge and buy another tank? Or do I wait till keg one is gone?

my only concern with hooking up to my 4 way manifold is that I was told it needs to be in the keg at room temps... for a week or two before its ready?

If you have a regulator, you can hook it up to however many kegs you want. You can use a Y type fitting, or a distributor to take gas to all the kegs. I like having check valves installed, to keep beer from coming back to the regulator, but you should have that even for one keg.

Room temperature, fridge temperature, it doesn't matter where you have the co2 tank and/or the manifold.

In my case, I have a Y fitting, and one goes to a 4-way distributor and one goes just to one disconnect. That way I can have five kegs on one co2 tank. My kegerator holds five kegs and the co2 tank.

You can also daisy chain regulators if you want to be able to provide different pressures to multiple kegs. No need at all to have more than one tank... Unless maybe you have 25 kegs or something.

Secondary regulators are an option (as Crusty states above).



Sounds to me like you are saying you were told that you need to carb the beer at room temp. This is actually not the case. Colder liquid will absorb CO2 better than warmer.

get the air distributor.

hookup the keg and seal the lid with CO2. leave at room temp to 'age' if you want, then put it in the fridge and carb it up.

once it's in the keg, it goes into the kegerator at my house - and under pressure. No temperature concerns.
Build/buy a manifold...

how big is your CO2 tank? I'd venture that most of us use 5 or 10 pounders (mine's a 10) and a charge will last a year or more on many kegs.

If you want to force/boost carb another keg you will need a second regulator. If you are doing the set it and forget it method then you will be fine. I'm impatient so I have 2 Regs so I can serve and boost carb at the same time. I recently got my stuff from www.kegconnection.com all good stuff and good prices

+1 for 2 regulators.

I also just got my dual regulator set up working. I have one regulator feeding the kegerator to a 5 port manifold inside. The second regulator I leave set at 30psi and have a line outside of the fridge that I use just for sealing/force cabing.

The primary regulator is set at 30psi and the blue line comes right off of that for purging kegs after filling.

This setup was going to be temporary until I got around to mounting them on the wall of the freezer, but it works so . . .

I'm in the (slow) process of building a 6-tap system in my house. Since I'm going to be serving carbonated water and soda on 2 of the taps, I'll be running a regulator right off the 20lb CO2 tank set at the soda/water pressure. That will be split into two lines. One that's split again into the two non-beer kegs, and one that goes to another regulator that backs down the pressure to serving. Set and forget method only unless I want to disable a water/soda tap for a few days (or add another split on the soda side).

I haven't picked up a second regulator yet, but I still force-carb. Just remember to cut off the gas to the other keg(s) in the system, or your next pour will be somewhat surprising. You can still get decent pours from the cut-off kegs for a while.

However.....the second regulator is the way to go. I will run from regulator 1 to my 3-way manifold and leave regulator 2 as my force carb and beer line cleaning/sanitizing circuit.

If you bought from kegconnection, he sells an add-on regulator pretty cheap.

I have a regulator, CO2 tank and fridge solely for keeping "on deck" kegs, cold and carbonated. I am planning on buying a 4 way manifold but am not exactly sure how to connect the regulator to the manifold. Do I need to get a single ball valve to connect to the regulator then run a hose from that to the manifold or is there a better option? I was looking at these two items here.

http://www.kegcowboy.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=173

http://www.lowes.com/pd_221029-4712...ball+valve&N=0&langId=-1&storeId=10151&rpp=24

By the way, I believe the threads on the regulator are 1/4 inch, I'm not real sure what the above manifold is setup for whether it's 5/16 or 1/4 or if it even matters.

I asked this in another thread, but I'll ask in here in case anyone can has an answer.

RoundKid said:

Get two tanks if you are up for the cost. I have a 20# with a 6 way and a 2.5# with a Y. The small one is for transfers, events, burst carbing (rarely). My big tank is in my kegerator. It is a six way because that's how many kegs fit in the fridge. I normally carbonate in the fermenter.

Click to expand...

I'm wondering, what's to stop someone with one tank just having the one line that runs from the regulator to the distributer, then one line with a Y that you keep aside until you need it, and when you want to force carb a beer, just detach the line that runs to the distributer, and attach the new line with the Y connector, crank up your c02 pressure, force carb, then shut off you gas again, rehook it back up to the distributer, and then once your force-carbonated beer is ready, hook it up to your distributer?

Does this makes sense? I assume there wouldn't be any consequences of temporarily shutting the c02 off to the kegs that you already have carbonated, for just a few minutes?

I have a 3-way distributor and a single regulator. One of the valves on the distributor is a dedicated force carb line with a black disconnect, the other two are for serving. I always try to make sure I don't need to force carb anything until the other kegs have plenty of co2 in suspension so I can pour from them while the other keg is carbing...if not, it's simple to turn the valves off on whatever I need to and adjust the regulator to the correct pressure. As long as I'm not bleeding out the wrong keg (been there, done that) it works pretty well. I recently got the bright idea of using my old picnic tap so I can have three on tap but it's not long enough and foams like crazy. Back to the board....

Edit: nevermind

Yooper said:

If you have a regulator, you can hook it up to however many kegs you want. You can use a Y type fitting, or a distributor to take gas to all the kegs. I like having check valves installed, to keep beer from coming back to the regulator, but you should have that even for one keg.

Room temperature, fridge temperature, it doesn't matter where you have the co2 tank and/or the manifold.

In my case, I have a Y fitting, and one goes to a 4-way distributor and one goes just to one disconnect. That way I can have five kegs on one co2 tank. My kegerator holds five kegs and the co2 tank.

Click to expand...

This post is a bit old but you're doing what I'm doing - perhaps. I've a 3 keg setup that comes from a manifold. But each exit on the manifold has its own regulator. I'm adding another tank but was thinking of dropping back to a simple 4 way manifold rather than add another regulator. I had the separate ones because I also had root beer in one of the taps. But I don't any more. Only ales, porter, and lager. The pressures run pretty close. And because I'm at altitude I run extra long beer lines which mutes everything coming out. Slower but less foam problems. What would you think to a simple manifold rather than 4 regulators on it?

I don’t know why this is so complicated. I use a carb stone. All I do is to close the valve for the other one or two kegs I may have in mu keezer and pump up slowly the keg I am carbing. In 6-12hrs it is done. Nothing bleeds from the other kegs. After that I reopen the valves and all is back to normal. I have even served one or two beers if needed. Multiple regulators would be nice but probably more if you serve at different pressures. I always serve at 12psi. I’m not picky about that.

802VermontHomebrew said:

If I have 4 kegs and one co2 tank.... how can I carb up my second keg with my first keg already filled with the co2 tank connected to that keg? My only thought is hooking it up to my 4 way air manifold and carbing it inside my chest freezer where my first keg is...

what do you guys do that only have one co2 tank?? should I splurge and buy another tank? Or do I wait till keg one is gone?

Click to expand...

I do the "set and forget" in my kegerator, with one connected CO2 tank, but with air manifolds so I can control CO2 to each keg. Having a backup tank is a good idea, since they like to kick while you are trying to serve.

I know it's an old thread, but if you have a relatively simple setup (like me) You can still burst carb and serve different kegs just fine. I think a couple above alluded to this as well, but, my setup is one regulator then and a three way splitting manifold with check valves on each. If I want to burst carb a new keg and keep the other(s) at serving pressure, I just set the regulator to serving pressure first, which will put the proper amount of pressure in the serving keg. Then close the check valve to the serving keg and up the pressure to burst carb pressure.

Depending on how much beer is in the serving keg, you can likely get several pours without even opening the check valve again. I just make sure to run the process above again when I'm done drinking on the serving keg to make sure it is stored at correct pressure, otherwise your serving beer will start to go flat.