Keeping carved keg warm

[signguy35]

Don't have much room in fridge for another keg but my beer is ready. Can I set it at 40 psi then unhook gas and leave it sit outside of fridge for 36 hours then will it be carbed up well enough or do I need to keep the gas on it for that long? Thanks

 

[day_trippr]

It'll take a lot longer to infuse two to three times the volume of beer with CO2.
Even if you try burst-carbing it'll take a good 24 hours at high pressure to get close to a decent carb level...

Cheers!

 

[MagicMatt]

Beer carbonates more slowly at higher temperatures. This means that if it takes 7 days at 32°F to carbonate a beer to 2.5 volumes, it will take at least 14 days to carbonate the same beer at 70°F to 2.5 volumes. Note that both of these assume the 'set and forget' method, meaning using the temp/pressure charts that exist to determine the pressure to set for a desired volume of CO2 when the beer is a 'x' temp.

In short, if you want your beer to be carbed to 2.5 volumes when it's sitting at 70°F, you'll need to leave the CO2 hooked up to it at about 30psi for about 2 weeks.

 

[doug293cz]

Don't have much room in fridge for another keg but my beer is ready. Can I set it at 40 psi then unhook gas and leave it sit outside of fridge for 36 hours then will it be carbed up well enough or do I need to keep the gas on it for that long? Thanks

You can't just fill the small headspace with high pressure CO2 and get the beer to carb up reasonably. 40 psi gauge pressure is 54.7 psi absolute pressure. So, you have 54.7 / 14.7 = 3.72 times the headspace volume of CO2. With 5 gal of beer in a ball lock keg you have about 5 cups (0.3125 gal) of headspace, which means that you would have 3.7 * 0.3125 = 1.16 gal of CO2 in the headspace (referenced to standard pressure.) Your beer will have about 0.8 volumes of CO2 at kegging, so to get 2.4 volumes final, you need to add 1.6 volumes of CO2 to the beer. 1.6 volumes * 5 gal = 8 gal of CO2 at standard pressure. Since you only have 1.16 gal of CO2 in the headspace, you are way short of the needed 8 gals.

You need to leave the keg connected to gas in order to force carbonate it. The alternative is to prime the keg and let it naturally carb.

Brew on