Conditioning in a Cornie?

[vtchuck]

I've got a couple of bigger beers.. an attempt at a Double Bag clone and a barleywine that will be ready for conditioning soon and I'm considering crash cooling the secondary as I usually do. Then transferring to the cornie and force carbing. I'm thinking of storing the carbed brew at cellar temperature (about 62 - 64 F in the summer) and off the gas rather than in the kegerator. Maybe putting it on the gas every couple of weeks to keep the pressure up?

This doesn't seem to me to be a whole lot different than bottle conditioning, but maybe I'm missing something. Any pitfalls with this method?

TIA

 

[r2eng]

That's what I used to do.

I have now skipped the crash-cool in the carboy in favor if racking the secondary into the kegs w/o crash cooling. I purge the keg, leave at 30 psi over night, and then cellar. I then cool and finish carbing 48 hours prior to serving. I get a pint that's a bit cloudy (I drink it... still good!), but works beautifully!

Not my method... "borrowed" it from HBT members.

Eric

 

[the_bird]

Sure don't see a problem with that. If you're just conditioning, there's probably no reason to fully carb the beer at that point; just hit it with enough gas to purge any O2 and to make a nice tight seal. I'd hope that you don't have to hit it with pressure again, or you've got a leak somewhere that you need to find and deal with.

 

[david_42]

As long as you have a good seal on the keg, they can sit for years. I have a gage on a gas connector that I use to check pressure every couple months. The only problem I've had was a poppet that started leaking for no apparent reason. Leaked a quart or two of blackberry cider into the conditioning cabinet.