Kegging and Camping

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Logo06

Logo06
Joined
Sep 23, 2019
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
New Zealand
Hi

I am planning summer holidays which entails 3 weeks camping in late December (I'm in New Zealand). I currently have a standard 19l corny keg set up, and am planning to take 2 kegs with me.

Ill chill and force carbonate prior to going, the issue is I don't have access to power at the camp site or a cooler large enough for the kegs. I do however have access to Ice (at an inflated price)

My plan is to use a 5l mini keg with ball lock and do a pressure transfer from the 19L kegs to the 5L and chill in cooler with ice, and serve with picnic tap or put a tap on the cooler.

Is it OK to do a pressure transfer at room temp? (air temperatures will be between 20-30 deg C),

Will i have any carbonation issues or foaming?

Thanks in advanced,
 
Not sure about transferring from the 19l to the 5l and how that would work. I would look into making a jockey box for dispensing. I built a simple one with a stainless coil and it serves nice cold beer from a room temperature keg. Nothing needed but ice and co2.
 
Theres a few on here I've seen that are pretty cool. Trash can kegerator which is cheap . One that really stuck out in my mind was the build a guy did using 2 10 gallon igloos . Its absolutely genius imo. He attached them together . Installed a tap and everything. Pretty cool . The trash can is pretty smart as well. If you have access to ice ya just need a place to contain it around your keg . The igloo build is nice because I imagine the ice last a good amount of time . If I camped a lot I would sure be making one of them.
 
Thanks Miller4, I looked into a jockey box initially but didn’t think this would work well for long use? Have you had it working for 4days + ?
I haven’t tried using it for an extended amount of time, I used it over two days just fine. You just have to replenish the ice. I do remember having to fiddle with the co2 some to get good pours.
 
There are definitely some very cool projects that people have built for "off the grid" serving of kegs, but if you don't care about the "DIY journey" and just want to get down to business, there are simple plug-and-play solutions out there.

For example, I have one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Corne...ocphy=9016897&hvtargid=pla-309928914855&psc=1

I attach one of those little "keg charger" mini-regulators that uses tiny CO2 cartridges, and a picnic tap. It works wonderfully, it's lightweight, it's compact, and requires no effort to build.

You will need to refresh the ice as you go, but this is the case with pretty much any portable solution. If you put an already-chilled keg in this cooler and surround it with ice, you're good to go for quite a while. Every time I've used it, there has still been plenty of ice in the cooler the following day. No leaks to speak of, either. Before I had ability to serve draft beer upstairs, I'd set this thing on the hardwood floor in the living room during holiday parties, etc.
 
If there is a river or stream where you are going to camp and the water is cool enough you could put the kegs in the water then run through a jockey box. That would make your expensive ice last longer.

In theory, I have never tried anything like that.
 
Hi guys really appreciate the input,

I think using the 5L kegs in the small chilly bin (cooler) will work the best (will be good for boating/walks and the beach too),

I trialed it last night by storing my 19L keg in the fermentation chamber at 19 deg C (66F) for a couple of days, I then purged the 5L keg and pressurized it roughly to the same as the 19L keg and connected a gas to gas line between the two, this equalized the pressure.
I then disconnected the gas line, connected a liquid to liquid line released a tiny bit of pressure in the 5L keg - beer started to flow once the line was full I then reconnected the gas to gas line and let gravity do its work. Beer flowed until the keg was full i saw no sign of foam and have the 5L back in the fridge pouring and tasting a treat.
Ill have to get some scales as to not over full the mini keg next time.

But all in all, worked well.
Photo 02-10-2019, 18 49 50.jpg
Photo 02-10-2019, 19 06 15.jpg
 
Back
Top