Kegging challenge - need your help

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ArizonaGoalie

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After giving away a few bottles of my beer to the powers that be in the office, our company owner asked me to provide the beer for a May 2 BBQ.

The timing is no problem at all. However, I have NEVER kegged and need to keg this beer.

HBT vets - what are my options here? I need to brew 10 gallons and bring two 5 gallon kegs. Besides buying a kegerator, is there a simple way to put the beer in kegs, add the CO2, and dispense?

Thanks in advance. :confused:
 
Do you have the equipment? e.g. Co2 tank, regulator, quick disconnects, kegs, etc.?

Assuming you do, it's a simple as carbonating the beer, hooking up the lines, and dispensing. You can use a picnic tap on the beer out line, and put the kegs in buckets full of ice.
 
You have a few options for your faucet: jockey box, picnic taps, or a faucet adapter that attaches directly to your QD.

As for pushing the beer out you'll need either: your full size CO2 tank and regulator, a 20oz paintball canister of CO2 with a regulator, or the QD adapter that takes a 16g CO2 cartridge.
 
Santize keg by filling with Star San, sealing, shaking momentarily, then hooking up to air or CO2 to the IN post and connecting a handheld picnic tap or other faucet to the OUT post and pushing all the sanitizer through the outlet of the keg. Don't fear the foam left inside.

Remove the couplings from the posts, except CO2 on the IN, and blast the sealed keg with a few psi. Cut the gas then pull the grenade pin (pressure relief valve on top) to purge the inside of the keg so that the oxygen gets pushed out and replaced by CO2. I do this 2-3 times. Disconnect the gas. Leave the keg, which contains a nice fog of CO2, sealed until your siphon is up and ready to rack from the fermenter.

Get the beer ready, remove the keg lid and siphon the beer into the keg. A smooth, circumferential flow might benefit the beer but I've had brews splash a ton as they were transferred and were still amazing.

Seal the keg lid. Attach the CO2 and purge the headspace of any trace oxygen by again pressurizing to some arbitrary psi, sealing the gas, then releasing the pressure from the keg, and repeating a few times.

That's really it. After that, I put it in my keezer with the temp controller at about 7 C, connect the gas, crank it up to 25 psi, leave the gas on, wait 2-3 days, seal the gas and release most of the pressure, using the rest to dispense myself a sample so I can determine if I want to put it on gas 1-2 more days or not. After trying it again I will try to leave it under a mild serving pressure of 5 psi but you would be fine just storing it in the fridge without gas. There is no secret to carbonating, just put the beer under pressure for some time and try it. If you're in no hurry you could try something like 15-20 psi and after 2-3 days just take it day by day until it's good.

To dispense, I connect the gas low <5 psi, and connect the picnic tap to pour. You might want two. The kegs will need to be chilled somehow. You can get it done. Best of luck, you will crush it though
 
Note you'll require: 5 lbs CO2 tank (or some other size), CO2 regulator (doesn't need to be a dual regulator), adjustable wrench for regulator, 4-6 beverage hose with picnic tap and quick-disconnect on other end for OUT post, tubing to connect the gas to the corny keg quick-disconnect, which goes on the IN post.

7/8 and 11/16" standard wrench (for keg posts, hex and star, mine all are mixed it seems)
 
@POTP thanks for the good overview of kegging! about to fill my first pepsi tank again after 25 years. and have been dragging butt to get it done for lack of easy info for how to proceed! PS: this tank is new, I gave the first wave of equipment away a decade ago...sigh
 
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