Carbonation Stones

[bottlenose]

I've seen some conflicting advice on using these. One school of though indicates that you put it on some tube attached to the gas line, close up the keg, and slowly increase the pressure from a couple PSI up to your target by a PSI every minute or two. The other is similar, except that one leaves the keg open and runs the gas at 15 psi or so for half an hour or longer. My personal experience is having tried the second approach, and it takes a few days of topping off the pressure in the keg before the beer is truly carbonated.

Has anyone tried both methods and found that one works better than the other?

Another thing I have seen mentioned is to leave the stone hooked up to the gas line while serving. This seems like a good way to get beer inside the stone and gas line, but has anyone had it work well for them?

 

[JuanMoore]

I've seen some conflicting advice on using these. One school of though indicates that you put it on some tube attached to the gas line, close up the keg, and slowly increase the pressure from a couple PSI up to your target by a PSI every minute or two. The other is similar, except that one leaves the keg open and runs the gas at 15 psi or so for half an hour or longer. My personal experience is having tried the second approach, and it takes a few days of topping off the pressure in the keg before the beer is truly carbonated.

Has anyone tried both methods and found that one works better than the other?

Another thing I have seen mentioned is to leave the stone hooked up to the gas line while serving. This seems like a good way to get beer inside the stone and gas line, but has anyone had it work well for them?

Slowly increasing the pressure will get it carbonated faster. Most common method is increasing the pressure one psi every hour, not every minute. Setting it and leaving it at serving pressure works fine too, and is still way faster than set and forget, but is slower than slowly increasing the pressure. I've never served a keg with the carb stone in place, but as long as you don't run out of gas, there's no more danger of getting beer in the stone than when carbonating. Especially if you have a check valve installed in your gas line somewhere.

 

[JRems]

I had good results raising it 2 psi every 2 hours until you reach the carbonation volume you want. Even at room temp of 65, I have brought the pressure up to 25 psi over a couple days to get 2.5 volumes. When cooled to serving temp the carbonation was spot on.

 

[bottlenose]

Thanks for the tips. I have a tube cut to the right length to put the stone at the bottom of the keg, and will give the slow, closed process a try next time.

 

[bottlenose]

Tried on the last two batches. The slow, gradual carbonation method works great.

Only thing I've noticed is that the usual trick of racking to another keg by pushing with CO2 doesn't work well. I'll siphon next time.