Chilling a keg before filling

[HeavyHandedBrewing]

I will be kegging my first batch of homebrew over the weekend. There is tons of great information on this forum regarding the kegging process. One suggestion I have seen pop up several times is to chill the keg prior to filling it with homebrew. My question is this: when do you sanitize the keg? The answer probably is - before putting it into the keezer to chill it, but I just wanted to make sure. I do not want to ruin 10 gallons of homebrew in the process. The kegs I bought used and I have cleaned them several times. On a side note, the kegs were ordered from Kegconnect and arrived very clean on the inside. Thanks for any information.

 

[SD-SLIM]

If you want to chill your keg prior to filling it, then I would fill the keg with a no rinse sanitizer (swirl the solution around), run the sanitizer thru the lines right before you fill it with beer. Happy Brewing!

 

[Yooper]

Why would someone chill a keg before filling? I can't figure out the "why" behind that one!

 

[edie]

what is the purpose of chilling the keg before filling? haven't ever done it, maybe i should!

 

[kpr121]

Yea I think you are confusing between two types of keg transfers:
1. Filling a keg with recently fermented beer, and
2. Transferring already carbonated beer to keg (keg to keg jumping as some call it).

The reason why people chill their keg prior to 2 is to minimize the amount of CO2 that is brought out of solution, keeping foam down.

When you are simply transferring recently fermented beer (1) from a carboy or fermenting bucket, there is minimal CO2 so you dont have to worry about foam.

At least I think that's what youre thinking!

 

[Yooper]

Kegs are paper-thin. If you've ever washed one with hot water, and touched the sides, you know how fast and well the heat transfers! It'd be the same with chilling the keg. If you chilled the keg, as soon as you put 65 degree beer into it, the keg would warm up.

Are you sure you don't mean that people chill the keg with the beer IN it, before hooking it up to the gas?

 

[Bobby_M]

Absolutely no reason to chill the keg prior to racking and I don't think you've ever seen that advice here (please link to the thread if you find one). Probably see people refering to chilling before carbonation but even that is completely unnecessary.

 

[KevinM]

For me, it'll be to minimize loss of CO2 during a keg to keg transfer. On the premise that it'd be like transferring from keg to bottle. Granted, the keg will be sealed and possibly co2flushed beforehand so it shouldn't matter.
I'd sanitize the keg and keep the keg+sanitizer in the cold, then dump out the sanitizer when I'm ready to fill.

Beyond that though, there really isn't much thermal mass to a keg like Yoop said. Unlike bottles where there's a lot of thermal mass compared to the small amount of liquid inside.

Transferring pressurized beer into another keg presents its own trouble but I'd have chilled the receiving keg if I remembered to put the keg into the keezer this morning. I'll likely be doing a pressurized beer transfer into a separate keg tonight and want to minimize co2 loss, especially since I expect that I'll have to vent some from the receiving keg.

 

[HeavyHandedBrewing]

Thank you for clarifying my misconception. I must have been confusing transferring already carbonated beer from one fermentor to another with initially transferring the beer from the ferment or to the keg. I have never kegged beer before, nor do I have any friends who have, so I am trying to research as much as I can ahead of time.

 

[elproducto]

I do. Cold beer absorbs CO2 easier, so I guess I'm just making sure the beer stays cold when I force carb it.

 

[SD-SLIM]

I do. Cold beer absorbs CO2 easier, so I guess I'm just making sure the beer stays cold when I force carb it.

As mentioned in an earlier post, kegs have very thin walls and would chill faster than the fermented beer you put in it...so I dont see the value of chilling a keg, but if it works for you, than carry on!