First time kegging - any last minute tips?

I'm kegging my first beer tonight (first kegged, not first brewed). It's a DFH 60 minute clone that has been sitting in the primary for the last 5.5 weeks, dry hopping for the last 8 days and cold crashed for the last 24 hours. For carbing I intend on using higher pressure for 24 hours followed by dropping it to serving pressure so I can hopefully sample it at the weekend.

Any last minute tips/advice?

Make sure you're clean and sanitized and prepared for some good beer!

Purge your sanitized keg with CO2 before you rack your beer.
Connect the hose on your racking cane to barbed swivel nut. Attach the swivel nut to a "beverage out" quick disconnect. Siphon your beer into your keg via the quick disconnect attached to the "beverage out" post on your keg. Vent the keg pressure as the beer is being siphoned in.
No chance of oxidation if you follow this method.

jmf143 said:

Purge your sanitized keg with CO2 before you rack your beer.
Connect the hose on your racking cane to barbed swivel nut. Attach the swivel nut to a "beverage out" quick disconnect. Siphon your beer into your keg via the quick disconnect attached to the "beverage out" post on your keg. Vent the keg pressure as the beer is being siphoned in.
No chance of oxidation if you follow this method.

Click to expand...

What if you do not have a racking cane or barbed swivel nut?

I just open the top of the keg, siphon it in, making sure not to splash it around. Then when full I will purge with C02, pressurize and let it sit for a week or so to get carbonation.

Don't think to much. Put the beer in there, connect the gas and purge the oxygen.

Amended post:

Buy an autosiphon, barbed swivel nut and (optionally) a length of tubing sufficient to reach from your primary to your keg.
Attach swivel nut to autosiphon hose (or your recently purchsed tubing, if you replaced the autosiphon hose with it).
Purge your sanitized keg with CO2 before you rack your beer.
Connect the hose on your racking cane to barbed swivel nut. Attach the swivel nut to a "beverage out" quick disconnect. Siphon your beer into your keg via the quick disconnect attached to the "beverage out" post on your keg. Vent the keg pressure as the beer is being siphoned in.
No chance of oxidation if you follow this method.

If its worth doing, its worth doing right.

Tiredboy said:

For carbing I intend on using higher pressure for 24 hours followed by dropping it to serving pressure so I can hopefully sample it at the weekend.

Any last minute tips/advice?

Click to expand...

36 hours at 30 psi seems to get me close...usually 24 hrs is a little flat FWIW...

I kegged my first batch (first batch ever) about 2 weeks ago. I used this thread for suggestions, and basically followed Yooper's advice (pasted below). I had no problems. The beer took a few days to get some clarity and has been getting better every day. If you search, there are some threads that give advice about what pressure goes best with what style of beer. I did 12psi (at 6000 feet above sea level) for a pale ale and its perfect.

Yooper said:

Ok, if you want to carb fast, I'd totally change your procedure. Unless you like sediment filled foamy beer.

1. Clean and sanatize keg.(No S*** Sherlock)- Yep!
2. Fill keg with beer. Yep!
3. Pressurize keg with 30psi of CO2 and purge to clear out O2. Yep!
Here's where it changes:
4. Set in kegerator at 30 psi for 36 hours.
5. After 35 hours, purge and reset to 12 psi.
6. Pour about 3 ounces and discard (it'll be sludge)
7. Drink the keg.

I left off about 3 steps, plus the shaking/rolling part. I can see no advantage to shaking, except that you'll maybe have carbonated beer a day faster. But if you can't wait 36 hours to drink (and it'll take that long to cool anyway), then warm foamy beer with sediment might be good.

If you're not in a huge hurry:
1. Fill keg, and purge with co2 a couple of times.
2. Put in the kegerator at 12 psi.
3. come back in 10 days. Pour off the first three ounces. Drink the rest of the keg.

Click to expand...

Sounds good to me, but it reads like you need to drink the whole keg right away.

wilserbrewer said:

36 hours at 30 psi seems to get me close...usually 24 hrs is a little flat FWIW...

Click to expand...

set and forget at 30 or shake? I like the idea of being able to enjoy a pint on saturday!!

Edit - as I posted that so did other people! Think I'll follow the repost from slcdawg. I'm starting to think I owe Yooper beer too (Revvy already on the list from all the help!)

Whatever you want to do, man. If it is your first time, I like going more simple. You have a better chance of overcarbonating if you put the pressure high and shake it up.

It's not as fast but I get the perfect pour if I set it to 30 for 24 hours, then 20 for 48 hours then 10 for another 24 hours. In 4 days, I'm drinking perfectly carbed beer. Well, this works great for my IPA's but I can't suggest this for all types of beers.
But, I have 3 taps so I'm not in a rush to drink new brews right away and if I was, I'd surely use the 'shake, rattle and roll' method to get it down my throat faster.

My method has never failed me ( and I'm sure I stole it from somewhere here):

1. Get beer into keg
2. seal and purge headspace with regulator set to 25-30 psi
3. Put in kegerator at 25-30 for 48 hours.
4. Kill gas to keg, vent excess pressure, reset regulator to whatever serving pressure you want, I use 8psi on 5ft lines

5. Pour off 3-4 oz and toss, then drink mostly carbed beer. While it wont be perfectly carbed beer, it tastes and seems 90% there. Super easy 2 day waiting with no shaking.

Make sure nothing leaks. My 1st keg is carbing right now, and 2 days ago I lost at least a gallon through a slow leak while I was at work all day. Seems my LHBS was short a couple of clamps in my keg kit. In their defense, I did wonder to myself if there'd be an issue when I noticed there weren't any clamps for that side of the equation.

jmf143 said:

Amended post:

Buy an autosiphon, barbed swivel nut and (optionally) a length of tubing sufficient to reach from your primary to your keg.
Attach swivel nut to autosiphon hose (or your recently purchsed tubing, if you replaced the autosiphon hose with it).
Purge your sanitized keg with CO2 before you rack your beer.
Connect the hose on your racking cane to barbed swivel nut. Attach the swivel nut to a "beverage out" quick disconnect. Siphon your beer into your keg via the quick disconnect attached to the "beverage out" post on your keg. Vent the keg pressure as the beer is being siphoned in.
No chance of oxidation if you follow this method.

If its worth doing, its worth doing right.

Click to expand...

You're confusing the man, let him just put the beer in the keg.

HoppyDaze said:

You're confusing the man, let him just put the beer in the keg.

Click to expand...

Give him some credit for being intelligent. Its not that hard to follow.

HoppyDaze said:

Don't think to much. Put the beer in there, connect the gas and purge the oxygen.

Click to expand...

^ this

Well, I did it. Sampled the flat beer and it was amazing (top batch so far, great hoppy flavour without being too bitter).

All seemed to go well last night but when I looked this morning my tank pressure is low. Now the tank was filled at arounf 80F and looked full and it's now sitting in the keezer at arounf 40F but it is showing about half a tank of CO2. Now I expected the pressure to drop as it was in the cold but this seems a lot more than I expected. I can't hear/see any leaks so I hope it's just one of those things. I didn't get a chance to go through the system and check everything this morning as I was runnign late so I should know tonight. Either the level will have reached equilibrium or I will be out of gas!!

Tiredboy said:

Well, I did it. Sampled the flat beer and it was amazing (top batch so far, great hoppy flavour without being too bitter).

All seemed to go well last night but when I looked this morning my tank pressure is low. Now the tank was filled at arounf 80F and looked full and it's now sitting in the keezer at arounf 40F but it is showing about half a tank of CO2. Now I expected the pressure to drop as it was in the cold but this seems a lot more than I expected. I can't hear/see any leaks so I hope it's just one of those things. I didn't get a chance to go through the system and check everything this morning as I was runnign late so I should know tonight. Either the level will have reached equilibrium or I will be out of gas!!

Click to expand...

Is it at 550-600 psi? That's normal. How did the cylinder look full before you used it? The only way to know how much CO2 is in there is to weigh it. Until you're out of liquid CO2, the pressure gauge doesn't tell you how much is in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_data#Liquid.2Fvapor_equilibrium_thermodynamic_data

Either way leakcheck everything ASAP.

Thanks.

It's a 20lb cylinder, looked a bit grubby but nothing untoward and showed almost full after sitting around for a week. I was fairly liberal with gas use when I was running through the process and cleaning/sanitising so was probably slightly lower than 100% to when it went into the keezer (around 1000 seems about right but I'm not sure, I'm not used to all the measurements as I'm more used to scuba tanks where 240bar means it's full). From memory, this morning it was around 500psi (I think) so that seems about right.

Means I can stop worrying about it (at least for now). Thanks for the link. Not quite sure what it means but if I read it correctly, partial pressure at 40F should be roughly half than at 80F which seems about right (It was probably filled at around 80-90F and keezer is arounf 40F).

I'll check the pressure when I get in. If it has dropped I'll check everything for leaks (although iif its been leaking all day, chances are the tank will be empty by the time I get home). If not I'll assume all is well.

Again, the gauge doesn't show if it's full, the only way to know is to weigh it. Your scuba tank is full of compressed gas, this is full of a liquid that boils off to maintain pressure. As long as there's liquid in the cylinder, you're only reading the vapor pressure of CO2 which is highly temperature dependent. Just try lifting up the tank, ft it's still heavy you're fine.

To use that chart: 500 psig = 515 psia = 3551 kpa. Scroll down the second column (vapor pressure in kpa) and you'll see that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 deg C, which is 34 deg F. Are you sure your fridge is actually at 40? Are you sure the gauge is actually at 500? Either way leaking 20 pounds of CO2 out in one day would mean you have a pretty big leak, it should be noticeable.

Thanks for all the help. I got home on Friday and the guage was reading the same - no leakage. I also couldn't control myself and tried the beer on friday night after 24 hours at 30psi. It tasted great although (a little) undercarbed. Didn't stop me having a couple of pints though! Put the pressure back up to 30psi after serving and by saturday lunchtime (~36-40 hours in) it was great. It's now sitting at 12psi. Overall, very happy with my first kegging.

congrats!