Kegging Newb with a basic question

[infielders3]

Greetings HBT family,

I am sure this has been covered many times over but I couldn't find it with a quick peruse. I have a new (to me) Corny keg and have put my beer into it, gotten it carbonated, and now I want to know the best way to handle my equipment. These might be dumb questions but here we go.

I don't have a beer every night, and I don't even have a fridge for it yet so it sits at room temperature. Now that it is carbonated here are my questions:

Do I leave it sit on serving pressure with the hoses attached at 8-12 psi all the time?

or do I set it at 30 psi when I am not using it, disconnect the hoses and then bring it down to serving pressure and re-attach the hoses when I want to use it? (I read that maintaining 30psi when not in use insures a good seal on the keg)

When serving beer do I put it at 8-12 psi and then turn off the Co2 or leave the Co2 open?

What should I do with the product hose that is full of beer when not in use?

Thanks everyone, I am excited about this new world of kegging but am unsure of the best way to maintain my equipment when not in use.

-Ben

 

[DrWill]

Greetings HBT family,

I am sure this has been covered many times over but I couldn't find it with a quick peruse. I have a new (to me) Corny keg and have put my beer into it, gotten it carbonated, and now I want to know the best way to handle my equipment. These might be dumb questions but here we go.

I don't have a beer every night, and I don't even have a fridge for it yet so it sits at room temperature. Now that it is carbonated here are my questions:

Do I leave it sit on serving pressure with the hoses attached at 8-12 psi all the time?

or do I set it at 30 psi when I am not using it, disconnect the hoses and then bring it down to serving pressure and re-attach the hoses when I want to use it? (I read that maintaining 30psi when not in use insures a good seal on the keg)

When serving beer do I put it at 8-12 psi and then turn off the Co2 or leave the Co2 open?

What should I do with the product hose that is full of beer when not in use?

Thanks everyone, I am excited about this new world of kegging but am unsure of the best way to maintain my equipment when not in use.

-Ben

There's a few ways to handle things, but firsts first:

In most cases 8-12psi is a good carbonating pressure but for serving you could turn it down to 3-4psi. I don't follow my own advice here as you'll see below. The purpose of serving pressure is just to push carbonated beer. 30psi is good for an initial blast to force carbonate or to carbonate some soda water. If you keep your beer on 30psi it will over carbonate pretty quickly.

I'll tell you what I do, but that's not a recommendation, and even less does it suggest that this is THE right way. When I have a new beer, I keg it and purge the headspace with 30psi. I give it a nice good shock of CO2 and let it settle. Then it goes on to the beverage line at around 12psi. For the most part, I leave the gas off and just turn on the gas to pour a pint. If I am not drinking, I'll turn on the gas for a moment just to make sure that the pressure is where I want.

I usually put foil over the ends of my faucets to prevent bugs, but aside from that I don't worry about the beer in the lines.

Hope this helps. There may be some who hop on and criticise my methods, and they're probably right, so you should listen to them.