How To Force Carbonate Warm Beer

Hello all,

I have been reading up on force carbonation, however as the noob beer nerd that I am I am having a hard time understanding what, or how I should do this. I have a kegerator set up with home brewing corni kegs, and would like to force carbonate my warm batch of American wheat beer without getting too complicated. Can someone describe this process to me in average layman terms. I also want to know If I can force carbonate my beer batches and then leave them for a few weeks until I am ready to put them in the kegerator. How long can I store them? Any and all advice is appreciated.

 

I guess no one wanted to answer this thread as maybe my question was puzzling to some, and maybe silly to others, but since this post I have done my own research on the subject. What I found was that it is not advisable to force carbonate warm beer as the PSI setting required to do this is perhapse unsafe, although it can be done. Force carbonation of warm beer has to happen about about 40 PSI which I have heard to be unsafe, and also will most likely result in a overcarbonated beverage. So I just wanted to follow up on the subject, and if anyone wants to chime in on the subject feel free to add you comments, suggestions, and experiences.

 

What are you going to do then? Just wondering

 

My solution is to simply be more patient and force carbonate my American Wheat beer when already chilled and at the proper PSI for that particaular brew which happens to be a cross between an Amerian Wheat beer, and a American Pale Ale. So In short I will force carbonate my chilled brew for one day at about 3O PSI, then ratchet the PSI down to the proper range for slow force carbonating of 17 PSI for the duration.

 

I can't help you with what pressure to force carb a warm keg. I wish I knew, and was actually just thinking about this a few minutes ago. I know:

PV=nRT

or

((nRTi) / (PiVi)) = ((nRTf) / (PfVf))

But that only applies to homogeneous mixtures. We don't have that situation with kegs, where we have a liquid, dissolved gas, and gas in the same vessel.

It's been too long since college physics to intuitively think of the formula that would apply, however I think it'll just be a slight convolution of the above, accounting for dissolved gas levels at each temperature.

Also, all of my ball lock kegs are stamped that they're rated to hold 130 PSI. I would not consider 40 PSI unsafe.

In the mean time, I can tell you that I burst carb over a 24 hour period chilled. Look up the desired amount of atmospheres CO2 you want dissolved, use a table to convert that to PSI at your serving temperature, then apply 3x that pressure for 24 hours. It's gotten me pretty close so far with a brown, a cream ale and a hef so far.

 

I also have come to discover that once I keg my beer and carfully purge the keg of Oxygen it can be stored for a couple months in a temperate environment, like my closet, or basement until a tap is free on my keggerator. Im loving the whole idea of kegging my own brew and having it on tap. Below is a pic of my American Brown Ale, just poured from bottle last night. My Wheat Beer will be kegged this comming Wed., and should be ready for consumption during the Super Bowl.

 

You can keg it, then hit it with 30lbs to seal the lid and store it until your ready to chill. Check it occasionally for pressure and if it needs, give it another burst. I have stored beer this way for 6 months in the low 60's with no problem but I think wheats are better fresh. Sorry about the late response, but I did'nt see your post before today.

 

How warm is your beer? I understand it is a wheat beer and you are probably aiming for higher carbonation. I'll also assume you came across this chart in your research previously.

Why not force carb part of the way warm and then go the rest of the way once your kegerator is open?

 

http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

you just need more pressure for higher temps.

 

That chart is decidedly non-linear and doesn't go above 65F or 30PSI, making it useless for this purpose if the beer is over 2 atm.

 

Up to 6 months..thats awesome I may need that time as im currently brewing faster than I can consume my beer. No problem with the late response, I just was looking through my threads and saw that this one never took off so I decided to give it a boost. Thanks for your input!

 

Sitting at about 67 degrees in the secondary just chilling until wed. so if I were to force carbonate a warm keg it would be at 67 degrees, and yes I did finaly get a copy of the carbonation chart which is what made the subject of force carbonating a lot easier to get a grip on. I plan on serving both the Brown Ale, and this Wheat Ale during the Super Bowl. Im excited to see which is the favorite.

 

Ok, well, I figured it out.

Cheated and used logarithmic regression on the Kegerators.com chart. It came pretty close.

Code:

T ºF	1 psi	Log Reg	Error
30	1.82	1.81	0.01
31	1.78	1.77	0.01
32	1.75	1.73	0.02
33	1.71	1.70	0.01
34	1.68	1.66	0.02
35	1.63	1.63	0.00
36	1.6	1.59	0.01
37	1.55	1.56	-0.01
38	1.52	1.53	-0.01
39	1.49	1.50	-0.01
40	1.47	1.47	0.00
41	1.43	1.44	-0.01
42	1.39	1.41	-0.02
43	1.37	1.38	-0.01
44	1.35	1.35	0.00
45	1.32	1.33	-0.01
46	1.28	1.30	-0.02
47	1.26	1.28	-0.02
48	1.23	1.25	-0.02
49	1.21	1.23	-0.02
50	1.18	1.20	-0.02
51	1.18	1.18	0.00
52	1.16	1.16	0.00
53	1.14	1.13	0.01
54	1.12	1.11	0.01
55	1.1	1.09	0.01
56	1.07	1.07	0.00
57	1.05	1.05	0.00
58	1.03	1.03	0.00
59	1.02	1.01	0.01
60	1.01	0.99	0.02
61	0.99	0.97	0.02
62	0.96	0.95	0.01
63	0.93	0.93	0.00
64	0.91	0.91	0.00
65	0.88	0.89	-0.01

Extrapolating, here's that column extended to 100F.

Code:

T ºF	1 psi
66	0.87
67	0.86
68	0.84
69	0.82
70	0.80
71	0.79
72	0.77
73	0.75
74	0.74
75	0.72
76	0.71
77	0.69
78	0.67
79	0.66
80	0.64
81	0.63
82	0.62
83	0.60
84	0.59
85	0.57
86	0.56
87	0.55
88	0.53
89	0.52
90	0.51
91	0.49
92	0.48
93	0.47
94	0.45
95	0.44
96	0.43
97	0.42
98	0.40
99	0.39
100	0.38

Now I just have to expand the chart out manually. Not sure how to do logrymthic regression on trinomials without digging out my TI-83+ (who knows where that is by now), so I'll just take it one column at a time.

 

Your pic of the beer looks like you have a half barrel sized kegerator with a single tap. I have one of those as well, except that I have a triple tower. I mention that because it means that you have extra space in the kegerator in which you could chill and carb a keg without having to take a beer off tap. All you need is a regulator that allows you to have 2 different pressures for different lines. Easy solution for you...

BTW, I've kegged and carbed beer and put the kegs in my closet afterwards many times without any ill effects. You can definitely do that.

 

Yes, it will hold two corni kegs, I looked into a dual tap tower, but the only option in a two tap tower would require going up to a 3" tower which might mean some retro fitting for my kegerator. I wish I could find a two tap, 2" tower, but I cant find one. If I could find one I would quickly upgrade to a dual body regulator.

Right now I have the single set up with a 2 way distributer for maintaing kegs, and I can keep one similar beer in the keg force carbonating while one is on tap.

Does anyone know where I can find a 2 tap, 2" tower, or how I could go about retrofitting a 3" tower?

 

@ Thadius856, im having trouble understanding your chart. At 69 degrees what does that transalate into in PSI?

 

No worries. It's just the first column of the Kegerator chart, extended down to 100F. So that column is 1 PSI of pressure at temperatures between 30F and 100F. The value is the # of atmospheres of CO2 dissolved.

At 1 PSI and 40F you have 1.47 atmospheres of dissolved CO2.
At 1 PSI and 90F you have 0.51 atmospheres of dissolved CO2.

Now , a 1 PSI column doesn't help terribly by itself. I'm still working to expand the chart out from 65F to 100F, then up to 5 atmospheres or 100 PSI (whichever I hit first).

 

Great Thadius, I look forward to seeing the results of your chart. I will print it out when its complete, and thanks for your input in this gray area.

 

Here is another chart. The data is a little more coarse, but it goes a little higher in temperature and up to 3 volumes of co2, which should be good for almost anything you are doing. (There are styles which could go higher, but they aren't my favorites, so they aren't legitimate.)

http://www.winning-homebrew.com/support-files/kegcarbonationchart.pdf

 

I've never seen a 2" two tap tower before, but you can make your single tap tower into a two tap tower. It won't be side by side, you'll need it to be lower and offset on the tower, which might look unusual, and I think that's the reason you don't see them on the market. Here's what you'd need to do that:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chrome-Towe...384?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e74c568e8

 

Assuming I understand what you are describing, OP (or anyone else considering a similar mod) would need to ensure a glass would still fit under the lower tap. How large of an offset is it?

 

You'd need to be below the bend in the factory shank, and that may vary. I'd also recommend setting the offset to be 90 degrees, so that you can spin the tower on its existing screw holes (assumes 4 screws). End result would be one tap lower than the other, but both taps would be equidistant from front/center on the left and right.

 

BTW, I would only advocate doing this if you're in a situation where something is forcing you to stick with a 2" tower. In most cases, you should be able to replace the 2" tower with a 3", and purchase a tower instead of modifying. I've done it before, and didn't have a problem getting three hoses through the hole in the top of the kegerator. However, you would definitely need to use MFL fittings for your ball/pin locks, not the barbed style fitting.