New to kegging

[oldsccorpio227]

Hi. I tried to search this forum but couldn't find anything. I am new to kegging. I just got a kegerator and brewing a batch of beer. I was going to prime in a keg instead of carbonating with CO2. I did see some video where people just pour priming solution and beer on top and let it sit for 2 weeks. I always mixed when I bottled my beer to make sure it priming solution and beer have even concentration. Do I need to mix it when in a keg? Would you advise purging air with Nitrogen or letting it sit with air inside? I was thinking to purge a few times and at the end just opening a valve to let Nitroget escape and leave it as is. Appreciate any help.

 

[Transamguy77]

Just add the solution like you are bottling to the bottom of the keg and rack your beer over, your going to pressurize your keg still to seat the lid to make sure it seals and burp out the oxygen and then let it sit for a couple of weeks to carbonate.

 

[oldsccorpio227]

burp out the oxygen

any videos or instructions on how to burp out oxygen?

 

[pvpeacock]

If you have a ball lock keg, just hook up the CO2 to the keg and pull the pressure relief valve ring 5-6 times or more to purge the oxygen and fill the headspace with CO2.

 

[renstyle]

Google is your friend

 

[oldsccorpio227]

Google is your friend

I saw that video but it doesn't say anything about burping, and it seems like he didn't purge air out of the keg.

 

[bwible]

When you say nitrogen, do you mean CO2 - or do you have a beer gas nitro mixture? The beer gas mixture is for pushing nitro faucets which are special faucets. People only use straight nitrogen for kegging wine so it doesn’t carbonate.

Are you planning to make a stout or something and put it on nitro mix? That might make sense why you want to keg prime. You would need to force carbonate with CO2 and then dispense with beer gas.

 

[oldsccorpio227]

When you say nitrogen, do you mean CO2 - or do you have a beer gas nitro mixture? The beer gas mixture is for pushing nitro faucets which are special faucets. People only use straight nitrogen for kegging wine so it doesn’t carbonate.

Are you planning to make a stout or something and put it on nitro mix? That might make sense why you want to keg prime. You would need to force carbonate with CO2 and then dispense with beer gas.

yes, I mean CO2 not Nitrogen.

 

[bwible]

yes, I mean CO2 not Nitrogen.

Just wanted to be sure. If you had a nitro mix they usually sell that in a blue tank. Co2 tanks are silver or gray. Straight Nitrogen are red. O2 comes in green tanks.

It wouldn’t be that unusual for somebody to want to do a stout on nitro

 

[tld6008]

Hi. I tried to search this forum but couldn't find anything. I am new to kegging. I just got a kegerator and brewing a batch of beer. I was going to prime in a keg instead of carbonating with CO2. I did see some video where people just pour priming solution and beer on top and let it sit for 2 weeks. I always mixed when I bottled my beer to make sure it priming solution and beer have even concentration. Do I need to mix it when in a keg? Would you advise purging air with Nitrogen or letting it sit with air inside? I was thinking to purge a few times and at the end just opening a valve to let Nitroget escape and leave it as is. Appreciate any help.

You don't need to mix because you only have one bottle (keg) let it sit at room temperature for a week at least before chilling in the kegerator. Purge or burp after filling keg by pressurizing to 30 PSI and venting through reliefe valve, do it 4 or 5 times. Make sure you leave 5 psi or so in keg to insure the lid is sealed. You can spray starsan around the perimeter to check for leaks as it will foam up.

 

[renstyle]

I saw that video but it doesn't say anything about burping, and it seems like he didn't purge air out of the keg.

I took it for granted, but he did skip a step: Whenever you are placing a lid on a corny keg, especially one that you are expecting to build pressure over time with priming sugar, you need to "seat the lid" once it is attached. This is where you apply at least 5PSI of pressure from your CO2 tank to ensure the lid is making a gas-tight seal.

You need to do this whenever you work with a keg under pressure, so they go hand in hand.

Burping: This is entirely optional, but why not eh? While you are applying the 5PSI of CO2 to seat the lid, you can opt to open the PRV a few times to "burp" out gas that has a higher O2 concentration than what you are feeding from your tank. Each time you pull the PRV, the O2 concentration inside will the less and less. I would personally leave the keg primed at 5PSI from the start, I don't trust the corny lid will maintain a seal if I started at atmospheric pressure, but I could be wrong?

I haven't done a Brulosophy-esque experiment to verify this, but I would wager some of the O2 resident in the headspace *should* get consumed by the yeast as it is munching on the priming sugar. Bottle conditioned beer always has a small air gap near the top and they seem to turn out fine.

If it were me I'd do 4-5 "burps" for peace of mind if nothing else.

 

[doug293cz]

There are two reasons for burping the keg to remove air and O2 from the headspace:

1. Carbonation level depends on the "partial pressure" of CO2 in the headspace (and temperature of course.) If the headspace starts as air, and you put it on 12 psi of CO2, then the absolute pressure in the headspace is 26.7 psi absolute, and the CO2 partial pressure is 12 psi. If the carbonation chart/calculator says you need 12 psi (gauge), it means you need 26.7 psi CO2 partial pressure. If you purge the air from the headspace, and put it on 12 psig CO2, then the partial pressure will be 26.7 psia. So, if you don't purge the air, you will end up under carbed. This is less of an issue if you prime the keg with enough sugar to generate the required amount of CO2.
2. Residual O2 in the headspace will oxidize the beer. This is a really big issue with heavily hopped beers, esp. NEIPAs. For less oxidation sensitive beers, priming might be sufficient to reduce O2 levels to prevent severe oxidation, but the NEIPAs, not so much. Commercial brewers target less than 0.1 ppm (100 ppb) TPO (total packaged Oxygen.) Achieving these levels of O2 by headspace purging requires many more purge cycles than you might think.

The proper way to conduct a purge cycle is to pressurize the keg, shut off the CO2, pull the PRV until it stops hissing, and then repressurize the the keg. The following chart and table show what the residual O2 is after different numbers of cycles for different CO2 pressures.

If you want to eliminate oxidation issues, you want to purge 13 cycles at 30 psi. If you're not so worried about oxidation, then you only need to get the O2 down below about 20,000 ppm to insure that your carb level will be where you want it.

Brew on

 

[pvpeacock]

Sorry if I'm dense, but what does the inset box represent? PSI?

 

[day_trippr]

Yes, PSI.

 

[renstyle]

For less oxidation sensitive beers, priming might be sufficient to reduce O2 levels to prevent severe oxidation, but the NEIPAs, not so much.

Well, that answers the question of how a little headspace in a bottle for most styles of beer isn't a major oxidation issue, plus you're prolly using oxygen scavenging caps to boot.

But I never see NEIPAS in bottles, and this ^^^ is likely why.

 

[Beermeister32]

I usually keep the CO2 flowing and purge the keg PRV 15 cycles. Then I set the lid O-ring at the maximum value the tank can provide, usually around 60 psi. The 60 psi gets absorbed into the beer, so it doesn’t hold at that value. Then the keg gets set on 10 psi gas until it is ready, I have plenty of kegs to drink so it has the time to carbonate. There are many methods to speed this up if you are thirsty and need to drink it NOW!!!

On naturally carbonated kegs, I use a 4 to 4.3 oz charge of corn sugar. This will also uptake O2 in your beer. I then go through the 15 cycle purge, then set the lid at 60 psi per above. Place it on the cool floor somewhere for two to three weeks and it will naturally carbonate like if you were bottling.

 

[doug293cz]

I usually keep the CO2 flowing and purge the keg PRV 15 cycles. Then I set the lid O-ring at the maximum value the tank can provide, usually around 60 psi. The 60 psi gets absorbed into the beer, so it doesn’t hold at that value. Then the keg gets set on 10 psi gas until it is ready, I have plenty of kegs to drink so it has the time to carbonate. There are many methods to speed this up if you are thirsty and need to drink it NOW!!!

On naturally carbonated kegs, I use a 4 to 4.3 oz charge of corn sugar. This will also uptake O2 in your beer. I then go through the 15 cycle purge, then set the lid at 60 psi per above. Place it on the cool floor somewhere for two to three weeks and it will naturally carbonate like if you were bottling.

Keeping the CO2 flowing while venting will eventually purge the headspace of O2, but:

1. You probably are using much more CO2 than if you shut off the CO2 before each venting
2. There is no way to calculate the residual O2 level at the end of the purging, so you don't have any way to know how effective your purge process was (unless you have an O2 meter that is accurate down at ppb levels.)

Brew on

 

[Beermeister32]

I also run the CO2 when dry hopping so the net flow is away from the beer... So many ways to make beer...