Jockey Box Question

[hockeygreg44]

My buddy is having a bachelor party in the next few weeks and he asked me to bring a keg of home-brew for him. So a few weeks ago I brewed up a fat tire clone, his favorite beer, and now it is time to keg it. I plan to bring a jockey box to the bachelor party to leave set up in the house that we are renting throughout the weekend.

I have never used a jockey box for my home-brew before, everything I make goes right into a keg in my my kegorator and I set it and forget it until it is carbonated to my liking. The question that I have is should I naturally carbonate the keg with sugar or force carb it? I am going to let it carbonate in my basement which stays around 60F. Also, when it come time to serve my beer, what PSI should I set my regulator to?

GREG

 

[rgreenberg2000]

How you carbonate it won't matter, so it's completely your choice. I force carb all my brews, regardless of how I'm serving them (kegerator, jockey box, bottle.)

The regulator pressure on the jockey box is going to be driven by your line type, and length, as well as the temperature of the keg itself. On my JB, with the keg at room temp, i typically need a regulator pressure of about 24 psi to get a proper pour. My JB uses a cold plate, and YMMV depending on length of line from keg to plate or coil, length of line in plate/length of coil, and line length to tap (oh, and, of course, ID of all these lines matters, too.)

My best suggestion would be to do a test run beforehand if you can to simulate your serving conditions, and dial in the right regulator pressure. There are calculators out there you can seek out for some guidance, but you'll probably need to tinker a little with your set up to get it working the way you want.

HTH.

Rich