Advantages to kegging?

[lagnwag99]

I'm relatively new to all grain brewing. I made the jump 2 batches ago. I've always bottled my beer but it's becoming a very tedious process and I just don't have as much time as I used to.
My question is what are positives/negatives to kegging homebrew?
What materials/tools do I need to start kegging?
Cheers!

 

[BigFloyd]

I'll give one of each then wait for others to chime in.

Positive -

1) Kegging day is much nicer (and faster) than bottling day since there's only one vessel to clean, sanitize and transfer your brew into.

Negative -

1) Get ready to spend some $$. Ball lock kegs, CO2 tank, reg, etc. ain't cheap.

 

[brew_ny]

buy pinlocks they are cheap

takes 20 minutes tops to keg 10.5 gallons of beer

S_M

 

[EcuPirate07]

Man I went to kegs after 5 bottling days. So much faster and easier. Don't have to worry about under carbing beers anymore or waiting for the beer to carb (force carbing) lot easier to clean and store compaired to bottling. I think I got 2 kegs (old Pepsi kegs from a member on here) and all my equipment for under $100. Found a 20lb CO2 tank on eBay from a fire dept. for like $30. Just look for deals and you can make it out pretty cheap. No more buying bottle caps priming sugar or beer bottles.

Always good to keep the bottling equipment around incase you want to share with friends. Hope this helps.

 

[jekeane]

Pros: time. I can have a batch kegged, in the freezer, and carboys cleaned in the time it take to just get the bottles ready for the day.
Quicker turnaround on beers because you don't have to wait as long for carbonation. I prefer the clarity and taste of most my kegged beers to that of bottled beers.

Cons: Money and space although I had piles of bottles before I switched...

 

[bondra76]

kegging is a huge initial expense but zero expense after you get it going. My only expense now is filling up my CO2 cylinder which is like $25 every 8 kegs

 

[schematix]

Kegging is awesome. I've been a kegger since batch #1 and I wouldn't do it any other way. Prepare to shell out some coin though. I'm at least a grand deep.

Make sure to put some thought into what kind of kegs you want though. Ball locks are taller/narrow than the wider/shorter pin locks, but are at least $10-20 more each.

 

[bondra76]

Everyone in this thread will mention Cornelius and corny kegs but don't write off sankes. I love my sanke kegs! Cornelius and cornies are what most home brewers use though.

 

[JonM]

I addition to the time savers above, you can make back sweetened, carbonated ciders without fooling around with bottle pasteurization, k-meta, sorbate, etc. AND you can make and carbonate sodas really easily.

 

[brewprint]

Pro: Massive amounts of time are saved. I could literally spend 10 times longer bottling (cleaning etc.) 50 beers than kegging 50 beers.

Con: All the coin it takes to get it rolling. A guy can start out reasonable with a single keg and a picnic tap. Even there you need a fridge.

 

[Onkel_Udo]

Even though I keg 95% of the time, I am going to play the devil's advocate for a minute.

You can greatly improve your bottling speed and reduce your time bottling by making what amounts to an assembly line for the 4 manual processes in bottling. With two people it can be quite fast but with only one person you still can cut your time almost in half.

Part of my former job was doing time and motion studies for various industrial facilities. With an investment of about $100, bottling can become much, much less tedious and time consuming.

Also, when bottling you should never run out of bottles but keggers often have to wait on killing a keg before transferring a beer from the fermentor. If you have a beer that improves with age, you are not tying up one of your limited supply of kegs. If you have a "slow-mover" it is not an issue as it is not tying up a keg or space in your serving fridge. Bottles are easily portable and you can even leave them behind at a party without stress. You can do cool labels on your bottles if you want an artistic bent. No dedicated beer fridge needed with bottles...and if you have one you do not have to modify it or worry about the dimension for maximum beer storage. Bottling will never lead to an obsession where you KEEP buying more equipment for your growing collection of fermented beer (save that for you the brewing hardware collection). If you ever have to downsize or work on the road...you can still bottle.

I am sure I missed a bunch but in the end, most folks (myself included) find bottling to be the most tedious part of homebrewing so that is why we keg.

 

[Psylocide]

Pro: Beer on tap, no bottling, easy to hit correct carb levels or correct "bad" carb levels, carb/drink faster.

Con: You go to pour a beer and foam shoots out everywhere because your keg is empty... again. "At least this one lasted 2 weeks."

 

[brewprint]

Even though I keg 95% of the time, I am going to play the devil's advocate for a minute.

You can greatly improve your bottling speed and reduce your time bottling by making what amounts to an assembly line for the 4 manual processes in bottling. With two people it can be quite fast but with only one person you still can cut your time almost in half.

Part of my former job was doing time and motion studies for various industrial facilities. With an investment of about $100, bottling can become much, much less tedious and time consuming.

Also, when bottling you should never run out of bottles but keggers often have to wait on killing a keg before transferring a beer from the fermentor. If you have a beer that improves with age, you are not tying up one of your limited supply of kegs. If you have a "slow-mover" it is not an issue as it is not tying up a keg or space in your serving fridge. Bottles are easily portable and you can even leave them behind at a party without stress. You can do cool labels on your bottles if you want an artistic bent. No dedicated beer fridge needed with bottles...and if you have one you do not have to modify it or worry about the dimension for maximum beer storage. Bottling will never lead to an obsession where you KEEP buying more equipment for your growing collection of fermented beer (save that for you the brewing hardware collection). If you ever have to downsize or work on the road...you can still bottle.

I am sure I missed a bunch but in the end, most folks (myself included) find bottling to be the most tedious part of homebrewing so that is why we keg.

Part of the waiting on a keg to be kicked can be eliminated by using 3 gallon kegs and by having at least one empty keg on standby.

I have 2 6.5 gallon and 2 3.5 gallon fermenters. If I need one of the bigger fermenters then that other keg ($35 pin lock) comes in handy. I also have 2 of the 3 gallon kegs.

Things seem to work out pretty good. I am learning to make the smaller batches for beers that could turn out not so good. Heck the brown ale I brewed that is in a 3 gallon keg won't get emptied soon enough.

 

[PGEduardo]

Kegging all the way if you can afford the upfront costs.

However I find myself dumping a bit of good beer once in awhile when filling my 5.5 gallon corny from a 6.5 gallon fermentor. I think I'm going to start keeping a few bottles on hand to salvage that last little bit...

 

[brewprint]

Kegging all the way if you can afford the upfront costs.

However I find myself dumping a bit of good beer once in awhile when filling my 5.5 gallon corny from a 6.5 gallon fermentor. I think I'm going to start keeping a few bottles on hand to salvage that last little bit...

I now do a full 5.5 gallon batch and all the trub and everything goes into the 6.5 gallon bucket. I do use a hop bag. There's usually just about 1/2 gallon of trub and it makes the perfect amount in my keg. Just about to the weld.

 

[jplowe]

When i bottled last, i forgot to tighten the spigot of the bottling bucket. Messy and wasteful. Now that i keg, no bottling bucket so no mess.

Also one vessel so no more 50 bottles collecting mold by the sink.

 

[stratslinger]

The only real downside I can think of to kegging is the learning curve - just count the number of threads on people with foamy pours, or dealing with over/under carbonation, and you'll see what I mean. If you do the research up front, build your setup with appropriate line lengths and use appropriate pressures from the get-go, you'll greatly simplify your learning curve - but you still may run into the occasional head scratcher.

 

[jbb3]

Kegging all the way if you can afford the upfront costs.

However I find myself dumping a bit of good beer once in awhile when filling my 5.5 gallon corny from a 6.5 gallon fermentor. I think I'm going to start keeping a few bottles on hand to salvage that last little bit...

That's what 32 oz EZ Cap/flip-top bottles are for...

 

[thegreatmaibockaddict]

I all to often find myself wanting to snag a bottle or two to take with me out the door, usually on the spur of the moment. I like to bring beer to share with friends and family all to often. It is way easier to have my beer bottled and ready to go rather than having to plan a mini bottling session just to bring some beer with me on the fly.

That said, my friend and I split batches so it is easier to divide up bottles than kegs. I also have my system down where I can bottle 5.5 gallons of beer in 2 hours or less from start to cleanup.

But there is another factor: The bubbles. if you have your bottling system down pat and have consistent carbonation with your batches, I find that the bubbles are smoother and creamier when compared to forced carbonation. This is most especially true when using DME. As a side note, one of the guys in my homebrew club did an experiment where he carbonated a batch 10 different ways with 9 different sugars and forced carbed one bottle. The general concensus was that the DME was the smoothest on the palate (I was using Honey at the time, and promptly switched).

Another factor comes into play if you happen to be a fan of cask ale. I find it fun to pop a bottle of still fermenting in the bottle beer that is half carbed and drink the active beer like a cask ale.

Of course, you can batch prime your keg with a smaller amount of priming sugar (DME) instead of putting the keg under pressure, and just use the gas to push out the beer after the beer has fermented for a few days.

Kegging has its place in my process and I do keg when my whole batch will be used at one place and at one time.

To each his own. There is no real right answer. Get your procedure down with bottling or kegging and time can be saved doing either.

 

[pvpeacock]

Pro's:
--you can use kegs as secondary fermenters to free up your primary fermenter for the next batch.
--you can use kegs to condition beer for long periods of time freeing up your primary fermenter. I aged/conditioned a coffee stout in a keg for over a year without tying up my primary fermenters
--you can tinker with the beer while its in the keg. If I have an IPA which isn't hoppy enough for me or has lost its hoppy flavor/aroma, I make a hop tea with a french press and pour it into the keg. Similarly, you can dry hop in the keg using a paint strainer bag and pull it out whenever you want to or even do multiple dry hops.
--you can adjust your carbonation level
--you can transfer beer to smaller kegs for parties or tailgates
--I have one 2.5 gallon keg filled with PBW another filled with Starsan for quick cleaning of the beer lines after each keg kicks
--racking from the fermenter to the keg is a breeze
--kegs are easy to clean

cons:
--leaks can be a pain to find and fix
--CO2 may not be easy to find depending on where you live
--cost

 

[schematix]

Don't have a keg for your next batch of beer? Easily solved by buying another keg! Who wants another 50-100 bottles laying around?

 

[max384]

I couldn't go back to bottling after kegging. It's SO much faster and easier on kegging day as opposed to bottling day. Beer is ready to drink faster. I prefer pouring a draft as opposed to opening and pouring a bottle. No worries about saving and cleaning bottles. No more case upon case of empty beer bottles in my basement.

The only downsides I can think of are initial startup cost and it's not as easy to estimate how much is left in a keg as opposed to counting bottles.

Seriously though, do eet!!!

 

[huckbof]

Pros

1. Thick glass, very durable and very difficult to break
2. Can withstand high pressures [nice for some belgians, not sure but they maybe nearly as strong as champagne style bottles]
3. No capping - they have fliptops
4. 15.2 oz each - so you need about 40 or so for a 5 gal batch
5. Long term storage for bigger brews like quads and such
6. Inventory variety - I have 11 diff. beers in bottles right now, one of them was brewed in 2013.

I have 178 Grolsch fliptop bottles - currently have a Coffee Porter, 2 different IPAs, Dubbel, Tripel, Munich Helles, Wee Heavy Strong Scotch Ale, and a Golden Strong Ale in Grolsch bottles and a black IPA, a Stout and a quad in brown bottles.

7. Gaskets last forever, never had to replace one, once I flipped one over
8. Closet storage vs a dedicated keg frig
9. We like Grolsch
10. Easier to split with brew buddy or give to friends

The larger volume and fliptops cuts the time significantly

Cons

1. You might not like Grolsch, but I wouldn't buy the LHBS brown fliptops, they are not as substantial as Grolsch
2. Because they are green, must store them in the dark
3. Cost, Grolsch fliptops are not cheap at over $2 a pop, but still a lot cheaper than kegging and you get to drink the beer
4. Cleaning btwn uses, let sit overnight with 1 drop bleach and fill with water, drain and keep fliptop on loose between batches
5. Takes me 90 minutes to bottle a batch by myself...5 minutes to get priming solution going, 20 mins to sanitize everything while priming solution is heating up and boiling, 15 mins to cool priming solution, 20 mins to transfer, 20 mins to fill 40 bottles, 5 mins to label, and 5 mins for cleanup. With a bottling partner, could probably do it in 1 hour.
6. More physical work
7. Effort moving and organizing bottles and loading in regrigerator ahead of time
8. 2 week wait for CO2

 

[max384]

Pros

1. Thick glass, very durable and very difficult to break
2. Can withstand high pressures [nice for some belgians, not sure but they maybe nearly as strong as champagne style bottles]
3. No capping - they have fliptops
4. 15.2 oz each - so you need about 40 or so for a 5 gal batch
5. Long term storage for bigger brews like quads and such
6. Inventory variety - I have 11 diff. beers in bottles right now, one of them was brewed in 2013.

I have 178 Grolsch fliptop bottles - currently have a Coffee Porter, 2 different IPAs, Dubbel, Tripel, Munich Helles, Wee Heavy Strong Scotch Ale, and a Golden Strong Ale in Grolsch bottles and a black IPA, a Stout and a quad in brown bottles.

7. Gaskets last forever, never had to replace one, once I flipped one over
8. Closet storage vs a dedicated keg frig
9. We like Grolsch

The larger volume and fliptops cuts the time significantly

Cons

1. You might not like Grolsch, but I wouldn't buy the LHBS brown fliptops, they are not as substantial as Grolsch
2. Because they are green, must store them in the dark
3. Cost, Grolsch fliptops are not cheap at over $2 a pop, but still a lot cheaper than kegging and you get to drink the beer
4. Cleaning btwn uses, let sit overnight with 1 drop bleach and fill with water, drain and keep fliptop on loose between batches
5. Takes me 90 minutes to bottle a batch by myself...5 minutes to get priming solution going, 20 mins to sanitize everything while priming solution is heating up and boiling, 15 mins to cool priming solution, 20 mins to transfer, 20 mins to fill 40 bottles, 5 mins to label, and 5 mins for cleanup. With a bottling partner, could probably do it in 1 hour.
6. More physical work
7. Effort moving and organizing bottles and loading in regrigerator ahead of time
8. 2 week wait for CO2

Since I quit bottling and went to kegging, I'll still bottle once in awhile from the keg, and when I do, I exclusively use Grolsch bottles. WAY better than standard 12 oz bottles.

 

[MattyIce]

Pros for me -

Less time on packaging day.
One week for consistent carbonation.
High alcohol brews carb no problem.
No need to explain sediment to folks new to home brew.
Sampling no longer requires opening an entire bottle. Just pull a couple ounces.

Cons -

Less convenient to travel & share anywhere but at the keg fridge
Bottling from a keg takes yet more equipment and another learning curve.
$$$

In the end, I choose to keg. A corny keg DOES make a handy bottle bucket though. Clean, sanitize, purge, siphon, pour priming solution, close and SHAKE for consistent priming mix. Then use a picnic tap to fill each bottle. Not too shabby.

 

[max384]

Pros for me -

Less time on packaging day.
One week for consistent carbonation.
High alcohol brews carb no problem.
No need to explain sediment to folks new to home brew.
Sampling no longer requires opening an entire bottle. Just pull a couple ounces.

Cons -

Less convenient to travel & share anywhere but at the keg fridge
Bottling from a keg takes yet more equipment and another learning curve.
$$$

In the end, I choose to keg. A corny keg DOES make a handy bottle bucket though. Clean, sanitize, purge, siphon, pour priming solution, close and SHAKE for consistent priming mix. Then use a picnic tap to fill each bottle. Not too shabby.

All it takes is a growler filler. I have a Blichman beer gun, but I rarely use it. The only time I'll use it is for a full five gallon batch that I want to bottle.

I fill a few Grolsch bottles for easy transportability with nothing but a growler filler all the time.

 

[Iseneye]

In addition to all the above I love being able to pour whatever quantity I like. I'm not a big drinker so on a week day I can have small amounts of whatever volume I feel like on the day. I found when bottling into 500ml bottles I was either drinking more than I wanted to or tipping out the surplus.

 

[jekeane]

That said, my friend and I split batches so it is easier to divide up bottles than kegs. I also have my system down where I can bottle 5.5 gallons of beer in 2 hours or less from start to cleanup.

2 hours is a brew day for and extract brewer! Splitting batches makes sense though. convince your friend to keg and jump to 10g batches would be even easier though : p

 

[2ellas]

kegging is a huge initial expense but zero expense after you get it going. My only expense now is filling up my CO2 cylinder which is like $25 every 8 kegs

What size tank do you have?

 

[2ellas]

I've not yet even pulled a carbonated pint out of my setup but I love it already! I installed a 2 faucet setup in an old fridge and kegged TWO batches in less time then it would have taken me to bottle one. You can get into it fairly cheaply if you source some parts used from Craigslist etc. My least favorite part is that my fridge is in the basement because there's no where upstairs that my wife would allow me to have another fridge devoted to beer.

Here's my inexperienced pros and cons list

pros

huge time saver
I have a sense of pride in being able to have my own beers on tap
fun diy project
opportunity for more fun diy projects like tap handles and adding more taps! (Hmm...that may also be a con)

cons

upfront cost (though you can get started for around $150 or less if you take your time)
there are many times I like the convenience of bottles
Setup and maintenance could potentially be intimidating to some

 

[jbb3]

Con: The beer is carbed up faster so you may have a tendency to start drinking it before it's had proper conditioning. If you don't have a supply built up, it's hard to wait... :smack:

Pro: It's just plain cool to walk up to your own tap(s), pull the handle and your creation just comes pouring out like magic...

 

[max384]

What size tank do you have?

I was wondering this as well. Eight kegs out of one cylinder sounds like a five pound tank... But $25 to fill five pounds?? That's more than it costs me to fill my 15 lb tank.

 

[MattyIce]

Word, I pay $18 for my 20#

 

[brewprint]

I pay $21.50 here in Northern Ohio for a 5lb exchange. I'm going to be putting it outside of the kegerator soon and I may see how much it would cost to upgrade.

EDIT: I just talked to OE Meyer where I get the tanks. I originally paid $60 for the 5lb tank. To fill he said it's $15 but there's other fees that make it cost $21. Now I can upgrade and pay $40 for a 10lb tank and it's $3 more to fill it so $18 but probably $25.

 

[bondra76]

What size tank do you have?

a 20 lb tank

 

[max384]

a 20 lb tank

You should start looking for a leak. You should be getting way more than eight kegs out of a 20 lb tank. I got about fifteen kegs out of my 15 lb last fill up, and that was including a co2 leak.

 

[brewprint]

I had a 5lb last me from New Years until just last week. That was around 8 kegs. The tank before I got about half. I attribute it to me using too much gas to clean lines.

 

[huckbof]

you've got me thinking about this and it seems like a lot of bother and money to spend for limited shelf life and limited variety

never underestimate the importance of the "cool" factor

 

[Onkel_Udo]

you've got me thinking about this and it seems like a lot of bother and money to spend for limited shelf life and limited variety

never underestimate the importance of the "cool" factor

Kegging? You can do both simultaneously.

Not sure what you mean by limited shelf life? Bottle or keg, shelf life is more in how you handle the beer prior to putting it in the container.

It is a lot of money. That being said, how much is your time worth? If you do not mind bottling, have a good assembly line process and have the time, I strongly suggest funneling money elsewhere in the hobby...unless you want that cool factor.

 

[max384]

you've got me thinking about this and it seems like a lot of bother and money to spend for limited shelf life and limited variety

never underestimate the importance of the "cool" factor

A lot of money? Depends upon how much a lot means to you, but, yes, there is an upfront cost. As far as bother goes, there is far less bother in kegging than bottling. After you keg a few batches (or in my case the first kegged batch), you'll wonder why you ever bottled in the first place.

Remember, you can always bottle from the keg, so limited variety is only limited by how often you bottle from the keg, and how many taps you have.

While I think having my own kegerator is pretty cool, it's far more about the convenience of it. The only thing I ever hated about homebrewing was bottling. Now that I keg, I love EVERYTHING about homebrewing!