New To Kegging

Well my buddy and I are new to the art of kegging and our novice minds on the topic prevailed over satisfying carbonated beer.

From the advice of another homebrewer I know, we kegged an Alt Oktoberfest Ale and a Kolsch. The first mistake I have now discovered is I started carbing as soon as I put the kegs in the fridge and didn't allow them to get down to the 37-38 degree mark I was aiming for.
The second mistake that I found out when tasting this last weekend was that I only set the kegs to carb at 20 psi for 3 days (one of the days when the beer was still trying to cool) and I was excited as I poured my first glass because of the head only to discover the after taste was quite flat.

I have spent several hours scouring the kegging and carbonation threads on this site and have determined that I 1)Didn't allow a long enough time frame for the CO2 to take into the beer and 2)Didn't wait until the beer was at the desired temperature to even start carbing.

Some other causes of concern are that we are using 2 used kegs and one of the in posts was fizzing when I attached the co2 disconnect which leads me to believe that we need to invest in some new o rings and seals, also we didn't have any keg lube this time.

My theory on making our next batch a success is to purchase new rings and seals, maybe even new in and out posts for the kegs, and keg lube. Waiting until the beer gets to the 37-38 degree range before carbing, and then actually waiting a week or 2 with the psi set to around 12-13.
Any helpful hints or words of advice would be appreciated.

 

This is good info....as I will be kegging my beer for the first time in a few weeks. Thanks!

 

You probably need to disconnect the gas and replace the "O" rings now and get some keg lube. If not you next thread will be "why is my CO2 tank empty?"

 

You can use Vaseline/petroleum jelly as keg lube..

It doesn't matter when you hook the gas up to start since the keg is warm and would require a higher psi than the fridge setting to do anything..

I do 30psi for 2 days and then down to 12psi for a week..

 

I would stay away from Vaseline. It is NOT water soluble and it may/will gum up poppets. Don't consider cutting corners with a $3.00 gasket kit or a $5.00 tub of keg lube when the keg is holding $40.00 plus time in beer.

 

In a pinch it works just fine and the food grade lube I use is petroleum based!

 

You typed the words. FOOD grade. I for one would not put Vaseline on any thing that I was going to consume.

 

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g292/COHummer/Wine Making/MineralOilLubricant.jpg

Hmmm. Let me think about what people do with Vaseline...

 

That's not Vaseline. This is.

 

K, as with everything my phone is to smart for me to link you to the MSDS but I can show you their page with no warnings of people eating it by the handful..
http://www.vaseline.us/products/petroleum-jelly/original/default.aspx

 

Well our cream ale turned out very nice actually. Despite having somewhat of a Hefeweizen flavor at the beginning it finishes with a crisp ale taste. I was surprised at how well it turned out because we kegged the 5 gallons and carbonated it using 5 oz of priming sugar, which is the same amount used when bottling, and I had read on some posts and threads on here that you aren't supposed to use the same amount of priming sugar that you use when kegging. Turns out that it is just fine, plus this time around we replaced the o ring set and used some keg lube which without a doubt added to the success of this batch. I also successfully bottled a number of bottles and growlers just using the bottling cane attached to the dispensing faucet, pretty much fits exactly but I did notice that it was helpful to not even start dispensing until you had the cane inserted in the faucet and then had the cane all the way down in the bottom of the bottle/growler allowing it to be open before you flip the faucet on to pour, other wise you will shoot the bottling cane out of the faucet insert thus causing spillage and stickiness.