Keg conditioning question

[idickson]

Hello. I've been trying work out the answer to this on my own, but no luck. I am buying a couple of three gallon kegs for dispensing beer at social events, etc. I was planning on conditioning in the keg with some corn sugar, carbonating at room temp for a few weeks like I do when bottling, then using a CO2 charger to dispense the beer later.

Can anyone tell me how you would go about conditioning in a keg? Mainly, how do I seal the beer in without a CO2 tank to pressurize the keg? And do I need a certain amount of head space for proper carbonation?

Thanks!


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[hercher]

In my opinion, you don't absolutely need to pressurize your keg -- you don't pressurize your bottles, do you? As the priming sugar is fermented, the yeast will produce it's own CO2.

 

[RCCOLA]

You will need to pressurize your keg or the lid won't seal. You also need to purge the O2 out of the keg with CO2 after racking. The natural carb will not happen fast enough to seat the lid and will push O2 into the beer without purging, oxidizing it.

Just pop off a cartridge after racking, purge the O2 and seat the lid, then keep an eye on it to make sure the pressure doesn't drop all the way to 0 and unseat the lid before it carbs.

If you doubt this, put a little water in an empty keg, close the lid and turn it upside down. Water will leak out.

 

[fartinmartin]

Here in the UK we have plastic kegs, mine are thirty years old. You rack the beer into the kegs with the priming sugar going in first, then seal the keg. The yeast deals with the priming sugar, produces the gas and in doing so it pressurises the keg, initially the head space. The gas continues and gets into the beer. The gas produced will normally dispense about twenty of the forty pint brew, at that point a single charge of gas is normally enough to dispense the rest of the brew.

This will dispense fine for serving a couple of pints a day, it will however struggle to dispense say twenty pints straight off. As the beers are poured it seems to release more gas into the headspace, there is also a small expansion of the plastic keg, later it contracts adding to the ability to serve the beer.

It is no different to what happens in the bottle.
For a mass pouring tho I would screw on the gas canister.