Best force carb method for 24 hours

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jeffb666

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So I need to force carb my beer tonight, unexpected guests showing up tomorrow. Whats the best method to force carb if I want to drink the beer in 24 hours?
 
There is no good way, and I wouldn't serve it to guests because it's most likely still green. If you absolutely have to, then you can crank your co2 up to 30psi and roll the keg on the ground for 30 minutes. Leave the pressure at 30 for 24 hours, then release the pressure and turn it down to serving temps.
 
Crank it to 30 psi and leave hooked until your ready to tap (no longer than maybe 24-48 hours). It helps if it's already cold, otherwise it will take a little longer, but that should give you a decent carb within a day or so. Probably not going to be the best tasting beer, depending how long it's already been conditioning, but at least you can pour some samples of it.
 
Its been 10 days since brewday, no bubbling on airlock, hyrdometer readings the same the past 2 days, seems to be done...
 
So I need to force carb my beer tonight, unexpected guests showing up tomorrow. Whats the best method to force carb if I want to drink the beer in 24 hours?

Chill the keg. Hit the keg with 30psi. Remove the gas disconnect. Shake the crap out of the keg. Repeat three times.

Let the keg sit for an hour, then sample. Repeat as needed to hit the right carbonation level, but be careful not to over carb.

I don't suggest this method, slow carbing is much better. But, it works.

;)
 
Its been 10 days since brewday, no bubbling on airlock, hyrdometer readings the same the past 2 days, seems to be done...

This beer is far from done in my opinion. Unless it's a wheat or IPA, I wouldn't even concider drinking it that early. You're just giving your drinkers a bad impression of homebrew by serving an inadequate product. Just my 2 cents.
 
Go buy a keg of craft beer and call it your own. The drawbacks of shaking the hell out of a green beer will be worse than not serving your homebrew.
 
Its been 10 days since brewday, no bubbling on airlock, hyrdometer readings the same the past 2 days, seems to be done...

What kind of beer is it? 11 days from brewing to drinking seems like wayyyy too quick a turn around for almost any beer, IMO.
 
There is no good way, and I wouldn't serve it to guests because it's most likely still green. If you absolutely have to, then you can crank your co2 up to 30psi and roll the keg on the ground for 30 minutes. Leave the pressure at 30 for 24 hours, then release the pressure and turn it down to serving temps.

Aboslutely DO NOT DO THIS if your beer is cold. You will have serious overcarbed beer if you do.

If you are going to use the shake/roll method, it should be at serving pressure (AKA 10-12 PSI).
 
Your beer is not necessarily too young to do this. If you have it chilled already you should be fine, although it sounds like you haven't cold crashed yet.

If it's already cold then go ahead and crank the psi up to north of 20. If you can, reverse your in/out on the keg. That is, have the gas go in the beer out valve. There is no need to do anything with the gas in valve, you're not dispensing yet.

Let it sit overnight at the higher psi, shake the keg in the morning. In your case I would give it a good solid shaking for well over a minute or so. You'll hear more gas entering the keg, that's good. Let it sit for the rest of the day at your higher psi.

In the evening when your guests arrive, turn off the gas and purge the keg. Replace the gas line to the gas in valve and the beer line to the beer out valve. Turn the gas back on at serving pressure and dispense. Your first pint will likely be a bit foamy but following that you should be fine. This will not be "full" carbonation per se but it is a very solid start and will get better in the following few days.

If you beer is not yet cold then I would suggest you're not likely to get very good carbonation in the next 24 hours. Although, try something and report back to us.

It can be done, there's no reason you can't. Keys are cold beer and going in the beer out line thereby getting CO2 going through the beer not just resting on top.
 
Problem with the shake method, at least in my experience, is that the CO2 seems much "sharper." If you have a couple days to let it mellow, it's fine, but drinking it within a day of shaking is a big no-no IMO.

I actually did that this summer to get a couple beers ready the day before a party. Gave the kegs a few good shakes to get them ready. The next week when talking to some of my friends, pretty much everyone that drank primarily those two beers said they had headaches the next day (and no, they weren't hangovers). Not sure if it's a coincidence, but I just don't see the point in risking it.

It's natural to want to have your beer ready to show off, but I'd seriously advise against it.
 
In my experience the 'sharp' taste is carbonic bite (same taste as seltzer water) and isn't a result of force carbing but is a consequence of over carbing which happens easily when force carbing.

You want the beer cold, set the pressure at serving pressure (13psi or so) then shake vigorously or roll until the gas stops going in. Then let settle overnight.

By shaking you increase surface area and speed the rate of absorption not the total volumes of co2 that will go into the beer. You just have to let the resultant foam settle before serving.
 
So I need to force carb my beer tonight, unexpected guests showing up tomorrow. Whats the best method to force carb if I want to drink the beer in 24 hours?

When I had my web site up, I had this page posted, telling how to force carb a keg. Works like a charm. Give it a try:

Some home brewers just seem to have a lot of patience. To be perfectly frank, I'm not one of those guys. When I fill a cornie keg with my latest creation, I want to DRINK it. At least give it a try!

And I've found out I don't have to wait!

Here is a method that will have your new keg of beer up and running in 15 minutes. This method has never failed me, which is why I think it is worthy of posting on this site.

I suppose if you're a real stickler for precise carbonation levels, this may not make you happy. But in the least, it will get you very close to where you want to be. You're perfect carbonation level will then be just hours away.
Now, how exactly to do this...

(Print the following instructions out and follow them exactly!)

1) Beer must be COLD.

2) Purge headspace.

3) Pressurize to 30 psi.

4) Lay at 5 deg angle, CO2 inlet UP.

5) Rock back and forth BRISKLY, like a steering wheel, for 50 - 60 seconds.

6) Close main valve on CO2 tank.

7) Continue rocking until gage drops to about 12 psi. Stand it up and rock it if you need to. (The pressure seems to drop more easily this way.) Make sure you note what pressure you've dropped the keg to! This is crucial to preventing foam backflow up the CO2 line!

8) Disconnect CO2 line from keg.

9) Open main valve on CO2 tank.

10) Adjust regulator to at least one psi ABOVE the pressure that you left in the keg!

11) Re-attach CO2 line to the keg.

12) Wait 10 minutes and pour yourself a beer. (It will improve over the next few hours though.)

One caveat: I have been told that this method won't work if a backflow preventer (checkvalve) is installed on your system.
 
I've done my last two kegs (which are also my first two kegs!) with a 20psi shake for 10 minutes or so (keg and beer is cold, around 42f). I've noticed none of this 'sharp bite' business or any sort of off flavor whatsoever.

To boot, both of these are super fast turn around beers. 8 and 9 days from brewing to keg for each. One was an IPA but the other is a mildly hopped brown, og was 1.055.

Both are delicious, both were single primary fermenters.
 
Shake it for a half hour or so at serving pressure. You can't over carb it that way. When the gas stops flowing your done.
This and only this. Any method using someting over serving pressure and you risk over carbing. Once over carbed, it'll take forever to get it right again.

Not the best situation to be in, but with a low gravity Brown Ale, you could get away with it. If you pitched the proper amount of healthy yeast and had good temperature control, there's no reason that this style couldn't be ready to drink in 10 days. I'm not a fan of shaking, but if you must, do it at serving pressure.
 
does it really make that much of a difference to the taste of the beer whether you force carb it or let it carb over several weeks? Assuming you don't overcarb it...
 
does it really make that much of a difference to the taste of the beer whether you force carb it or let it carb over several weeks? Assuming you don't overcarb it...

With your assumption, the carbonation method doesn't matter. What matters is how mature the brew is, and given most folks don't have deep pipelines and are eager to get a brew on tap, the former will result in several week younger beer, with the resulting difference in character.

In short, time matters a lot more than carbonation method...

Cheers!
 
day_trippr said:
With your assumption, the carbonation method doesn't matter. What matters is how mature the brew is, and given most folks don't have deep pipelines and are eager to get a brew on tap, the former will result in several week younger beer, with the resulting difference in character.

In short, time matters a lot more than carbonation method...

Cheers!

+1
Force carbing, if done correctly, won't affect the flavor of the beer. The problem is that it is often done on green beers. This combined with the tendency to over carb while force carbing often results in less-than-optimal tasting home brew.
 
Aboslutely DO NOT DO THIS if your beer is cold. You will have serious overcarbed beer if you do.

If you are going to use the shake/roll method, it should be at serving pressure (AKA 10-12 PSI).

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't do any form of quick carbing, but that was the way I was taught if you want to do it in 24 hours. I'm a "set it and forget it" guy.
 
can someone clarify "green beers" for me? I'm assuming it means "beers that are not ready." When I keg my ESB next week, it will have sat in primary for 6 days and secondary for 3 weeks. How important is it for the beer to mature AFTER carbonated?

I'm new to kegging... when I used to bottle, I would never have more than 5-10 in the first two weeks after a brew was carbonated. I certainly noticed it got better over time, but didn't realize this would also apply to kegging...
 
can someone clarify "green beers" for me? I'm assuming it means "beers that are not ready." When I keg my ESB next week, it will have sat in primary for 6 days and secondary for 3 weeks. How important is it for the beer to mature AFTER carbonated?

I'm new to kegging... when I used to bottle, I would never have more than 5-10 in the first two weeks after a brew was carbonated. I certainly noticed it got better over time, but didn't realize this would also apply to kegging...

Beer needs time to mature, whether in a bottle or a keg. When bottling, you HAVE to give the beer a minimum of time for the yeast to carbonate it. However with a keg, you can force carb and drink it the day it's kegged.

Some beers, like wheats, will mature fairly fast. Some take longer. I have a Belgian Pale I kegged on 12/24/2010. It did NOT taste good, it had a "dirt" taste. I stuck the keg in the kegerator recently, and it has become pretty tasty.
 
can someone clarify "green beers" for me? I'm assuming it means "beers that are not ready." When I keg my ESB next week, it will have sat in primary for 6 days and secondary for 3 weeks. How important is it for the beer to mature AFTER carbonated?

I'm new to kegging... when I used to bottle, I would never have more than 5-10 in the first two weeks after a brew was carbonated. I certainly noticed it got better over time, but didn't realize this would also apply to kegging...

Young beers can taste rough. The flavors mellow and blend with a little time. Supposedly the young beer also has a lot of acetaldehyde which is, evidently, a precursor to ethanol (i.e. the yeast make it then transform it into ethanol). So if the yeast haven't had ample time to finish the fermentation then you have a lot of acetaldehyde left in the beer.

The reason the young or 'acetaldehyde rich' beer is called green is supposedly because this compound tastes like *green apples* (cidery and tart). Another reason you can get this flavor in your beer is the excessive addition of cane sugar.

I personally have never detected this flavor in my beers, even when sampling when racking to secondary so I can't speak from experience. But that's the science behind the name.

So the short story is, green beer=young beer=acetaldehyde=green apple flavor.

Edit: to answer your other question, aging is separate from kegging. If you can successfully force carb the beer in a day or two then go ahead and drink it. That's a separate issue from the age. I just tried my second 5 gal of cream ale (I do 10 gal batches) and it was carbed 2 days ago. It's great, could be a bit more fizzy to meet the style guidelines but it's adequately carbed. Since this was the second half of the batch it's had ample time to age.

The temptation is to keg it at week 2, carb it in a day, and then begin drinking. You can do this but the beer certainly won't be tasting it's best, not because of the quick carb, but just because it's young. The nice thing about bottles is they *force* you to let the beer sit and age a bit more which usually improves the beer, sometimes dramatically.
 
You could always do a shooter of prehopped malt extract and chase it with a shot of everclear. That way you wouldn't even have to wait for fermentation.

I'm just trying to be funny but seriously, there's got to be a little respect for your homebrew. If this is a rush job for a house party full of people, you'd be doing a disservice to the reputation of homebrew. I'm not saying you can't pull off a decent beer in 2 weeks but it's highly unlikely that it's going to be decent in this case.
 
You could always do a shooter of prehopped malt extract and chase it with a shot of everclear. That way you wouldn't even have to wait for fermentation.

dude. that was funny..... when I get up off the floor Im gonna follow along this thread cause I am in the same boat wanting to drink my first keg of ipa
 
dude. that was funny..... when I get up off the floor Im gonna follow along this thread cause I am in the same boat wanting to drink my first keg of ipa
After 9 years this thread is probably not going to get much traffic...
 
This thread should be destroyed. Most of the tips are flat out wrong.
As a general rule, we do not delete threads that have multiple posts, even if they contain some bad information.

Also, some of the posts do contain good advice.

doug293cz
HBT Moderator
 
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