Beer in keg

[schia]

Hello all,

How long can we keep homemade brew in the keg? A bar tender told me that commercial beers like Guinness, Kilkenny, larger etc can only be kept in the keg for a maximum of 4-5days once its has tap. How true is this?

Can I keep my beer in the keg for at least 2-3 months once I hook it up together with Co2?

 

[autobaun70]

Bar tender needs to go back to beer school. You can easily get several months out of a keg. The key is proper temperature, and proper CO2 pressure for the beer in question. Most commercial beers I know of are well suited for 12-13 PSI, with 5'-6' of 3/16" beer line. If the pressure gets far from optimal, the volume of CO2 will become off, causing either very foamy beer (to much pressure) or very flat beer (pressure too low). If is a keg for a party, and going to be kicked quickly anyway, no need to really worry about storage pressure, so just adjust the pressure for optimal pour.

Home brew acts basically the same, except for the fact that it is typically not carbonated when you initially hook it up to the CO2. Because of this, you have to either up the pressure for a short period of time, or let it sit for around a week at serving pressure to get sufficient CO2 into solution for it to have the proper carbonation level.

 

[JasonInBTR]

Agreed with autobaun. Maybe 4-5 days in Narnia.....

 

[K5MOW]

Ok I would like to know if beer will last longer in a keg or will it last longer in bottles?

Thanks

Roger

 

[bendavanza]

Keg or bottles about the same. As long as it's sealed well and kept out of light and extreme temperatures, that is. I suppose you could argue that individually sealed bottles with oxygen absorbing caps might have more longevity than kegs because kegs are tapped and once they are tapped there could be contamination from the tapping equipment but that's unlikely if you keep your gear clean. Using a party pump with air rather than co2 will have a keg start to go stale in a day or 2. One other note, most kegs of domestic beer have more sensitivity to temp and time than imports because imported beers are usually pasteurized for the journey.

 

[shortyjacobs]

Dude...why the multiple threads?
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/beer-keg-221143/