Advice on force carbonating hard root beer in 2.5-gallon keg

[J2W2]

Hi,

I'm about a week out from force carbonating my first hard root beer, which I'll then bottle. My plan is to carbonate at 35 degrees and 15 psi as I want it highly carbonated.

I just read Bobby_M's post on force carbonation, and how two-weeks is the sweet spot to fully carbonate a keg. Since I'm using a 2.5-gallon keg (first time for that too - I've always used 5-gallon kegs for beer), I'm assuming it will carbonate much more quickly since it has the same head-space but half the liquid volume. But I've also read that sodas can take longer to carbonate as they can be more dense than beer. I'll be backsweetening with a pound of honey and a pound of sugar, so I'm sure that will at least partially be the case for me.

What are your thoughts - just let it carbonate for two-weeks to be sure? Thanks for your help!

 

[Yooper]

Smaller kegs don't carbonate faster for me- but I've never really timed it.

 

[Vale71]

My experience back when I force carbed in kegs was that 2.5g kegs took half the time to carbonate then 5g kegs. If you want it to go even faster you can carb at room temp and then cool it once its done. Just remember to set the higher pressure required to achieve the same carbonation level at the higher temp.

 

[bracconiere]

i just learned how to carbonate by weight....i crank the reg up to 50psi, then shake the keg until my co2 tank loses the desired oz's of co2.....let chil, then hook it up....works great!


i just kegged and carbbed a keg of alco-pop to 2.1 vol with 2.7oz's of co2 (5gal keg) yesterday, didn't hook it up to the tank until today when it was cold, and when i pulled the prv it 'sounded' like it was at 8psi in the keg, just like i like it.....