Priming sugar in the keg?

A friend told me he was instructed by our LHBS guy to put priming sugar in the keg to carbonate. Is that a normal practice? I thought that sounded odd but I haven't started kegging yet. What do you think?

 

I believe this is known as "natural carbing," and isn't uncommon.

 

Folks do it all the time. I have 2 kegs currently carbing up this way.

 

I do it all the time. I don't have enough gas connects in my current Kegerator to carb up the pipeline so I just naturally carb with corn sugar in the keg.

two real quick hints though:

1. hit the keg with pressure when you seal it up. This seats the lid in place and prevents crap from getting in. (they really only seal under pressure)

2. Pull the pressure relieve valve a few times before you hook it to gas. The pressure build up in the keg may be greater than your serving pressure and you don't want backflow through the gas lines and into your regulator.

 

That's interesting. I can't wait to be able to keg. Bottling is a pain. I just kinda figure there wasn't really any point to putting priming sugar in the keg since you have the CO2. What are the benefits? Any differences in the flavor, mouthfeel, head retention?

 

That's a rather big debate.. and if you search here you'll find a crap-load of opinions.

I do it mostly because I simply don't have the room in my Kegerator to carbonate my pipeline as I brew it.

This way when I kick a keg I have an already carbed keg ready to go in its place.

Thus my CO2 is really only used for serving -- not for carbonating.

 

Active yeast do some pretty cool stuff. They take up oxygen, metabolize acetaldehyde into ethanol, and absorb diacetyl (in addition to farting CO2 and making your beer fizzy).

 

As of this post, there are THREE, count them three ACTIVE posts in this subforum alone asking this same question. Makes my left nut ache.

 

Thank you guys for all the helpful info. I appreciate your willingness and patience to answer my questions.

 

I tell ya what. Write the code and program a mandatory beginner's tutorial on using the search function as a pre-req to joining HBT.

Until then, we gotta do what we gotta do, man.

The Dude abides.

 

True dat