Ok, so we've been brewing for a couple of years now and bottling, but we want to start kegging. What I need to know is this; we have a keggerator setup already and just need to know what we need to take our beer from the primary to a pressurized keg. I'm guessing we need a CO2 container, some sort of connectors, and a keg or two. Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this and what equipment we need?
I'm not an expert as I started this summer, but started with a keg setup instead of bottling. If you are going to skip the secondary (go directly from your primary to a keg), you just need to rack to the (sanitized) keg. After filling it, close the keg and seal with CO2. Vent the keg, then re-seal with CO2 to your desired pressure for carbonation (e.g. 12 psi). (You might to repeat the gas/vent cycle a few times to ensure all the air is out the keg and replaced with CO2.) Then put the keg in the keggerator for a week.
If you want to do natural carbonation in the keg, you can sterilize your sugar solution (less than if your were bottling, e.g. 1/2 the amount) and put the sugar solution in the sanitized keg. Then rack the beer to the keg on top of the solution, do the venting trick above and then leave the keg sealed in the room where you would normally leave your bottles for conditioning (i.e. at a temperature that allows the yeast to eat the sugar and produce the natural carbonation.) After the carbonation period (e.g. one or two weeks), then put the keg in the fridge and your on the way to the races.
If you need/want to do a secondary in the keg, you can rack from the primary to the secondary, gas/vent to remove the excess oxygen, and do the secondary in the keg (sealed). After the secondary is complete, you can go from the secondary/conditioning keg to another (sanitized) using a keg to keg direct transfer. One way of doing this is to rig up a beverage out (from the secondary/conditioning keg) to the serving keg beverage out). In the serving keg, vent the oxygen (using the vent method above), then seal. Apply some gas to the conditioning keg which has the beverage to beverage line set up with the serving keg. Then allow the serving keg to vent using the pressure relief value, then the beer will start to transfer from the secondary/conditioning keg to the serving keg. Continue to occasionally vent form the serving keg as the transfer slows. Before doing the keg to keg transfer, you may want to remove a couple of pints from the secondary/conditioning keg as the secondary/conditioning probably created some waste which will have settled to the bottom. If you simply serve out a couple of pints, you will remove that (just like you would avoid that if you racked from the secondary).
Hope this makes sense. I hope the more experienced brewers will chime in with corrections or additional details/tips. I actually did the keg to keg transfer described above with the remains of a commercial beer that I wanted to put in a corny so I had room in my keggalator for additional home brew.
