GAbrewer
Well-Known Member
So I picked up a few soda kegs recently, a 20 pound CO2 canister with regulator, hoses and connectors, and one dog ugly home-made kegerator with a single tap. The stuff had been sitting around unused for quite a while, so I cleaned and sanitized the hell out of everything. I checked the kegs, bought a few new o-rings, keg lube and such. I also bought another beer side connector, some tubing, and a picnic tap so I could hopefully use more than one keg at a time. As it turns out, it was a good thing I bought the extra line, but I'll get to that later.
The first batch I tried to keg was a stout I had brewed about 2 months ago. It's been in a secondary for about a month. Before racking it, I put the whole carboy in the fridge Monday and let it chill for about 24 hours. My plan was to fill a few bottles to set aside in case I wanted to give some away, and also to compare the bottle-carbed beer to that in the keg. Now, it seemed silly to me to rack it to a bottling bucket since I was going to be kegging most of it. So I just sanitized a few bottles, put some Cooper's tabs in them for carbonation, and prepared to rack the beer out of the carboy. But one thing I learned the hard way is that trying to rack from an autosiphon into the bottle without a bottling wand attached is not a good plan. I ended up overflowing the first bottle and spraying beer all over the place before I clamped the tubing down and got it stopped. Not wanting to repeat this step six more times, I just went ahead and racked the rest of it into the keg, and put the keg back into the fridge for a little while.
Before I tried my hand at carbonating the keg, I figured I'd try to find a way to fill the remaining bottles. I decided to try something similar to the solution listed in BierMuncher's bottle-filler thread. I attached my bottling wand to the picnic tap, attached it to the keg, and then attached the CO2 tank to the keg. This worked and I was able to fill the bottles. After capping those, I was ready to try carbonating the beer in the keg. I tried a method I read about, which was to turn the PSI up to about 35 PSI, and sit in a chair with the keg in my lap and rock it back and forth for several minutes. This is supposed to allow it to carbonate quickly so you don't have to wait so long before drinking. So after doing this I left the keg in the fridge for a little while to let the beer cool off. I didn't leave the C02 tank connected, but I didn't release the excess pressure from the keg either. After a little while, maybe an hour, I released some of the excess pressure from the keg tried dispensing beer from the picnic tap. The first glass was all foam, and the next two weren't much better. After the foam died down, I tried it. It tasted reasonably good, but in spite of all the foam the beer really wan't as carbed as I would have liked.
The next day I tried another glass of my stout. It was a bit better carbed and less foamy, but not much. But now I had another beer I wanted to try kegging, so I figured I'd try this one and see how it turned out. It was an IPA which was had been in the primary bucket for about a month. I had put this one in the fridge at the same time as the first beer to let it cool off. At this time I decided to try connecting my stout to the kegerator tap and see if it worked. Unfortunately I found that beer was dripping from the hex-connector at the shank running through the fridge door. It made a big mess, so I just disconnected it and gave up on that plan for the moment. I think there's supposed to be a washer between the connector and the shank that must of been lost, so I'll have to look for one later. Fortunately, I still had my picnic tap, so I just cleaned it up and switched it to the other keg.
Again I intended to bottle a few beers before kegging the rest. This time I tried racking the beer from the bucket into a few bottles with the bottling wand attached to the auto-siphon. This didn't make a mess, but it didn't work either because the wand got gummed up with trub from the bucket. So again i just racked it all to the keg and used my BMBF clone to fill a few bottles. When that was done, I tried carbing the beer in the keg. This time I set it to about 30 PSI and only shook the keg for about 1 minute. It still had too much foam and not enough carbonation for my liking. I also decided I'd try leaving the keg and tank connected in the fridge for a little while with the gas set to about 12 PSI and see if the cold and gas would allow the beer to carb a little better. But what I found was that after an hour or so of that, my CO2 starts to leak from the coupling between the tank and the regulator. I think that either the washer between the tank and the regulator needs replacing, or perhaps the entire regulator. So I don't dare leave the tank connected and turned on for a long period of time.
At this point I think I'll check the beer tonight and see if it's any better. If it's not, maybe I'll see if I can replace the washers and stop the leak and see if I can carb it using the slower methods. I guess if all else fails I can prime in the keg and just use the CO2 tank to dispense if I can't figure out a better to get it carbed the way I like. I have to say so far that I like not having to clean and sanitize 50 bottles for every batch, but then again I've never had a complaint about the carbonation levels of my bottled beer. Hopefully I can be patient enough to figure out how to get this to work better.
Anyway, here's my ideas as to what I might be doing wrong. Sorry about turning this into a small novel.
Feel free to comment or add to this list as you see fit:
1. Maybe I'm just not being patient enough. Maybe a slow method of force carbonation would works better. Unfortunately I don't think it's a good idea to leave the gas on for a long time until I can make sure the connections aren't going to leak. Hopefully the washer is the problem. Money's in short supply right now, so I definitely won't be getting a new regulator right away.
2. Perhaps my lines are too short. The picnic tap I'm using only has about 3 feet of tubing. I've been reading that shorter lines can cause excess foam.
3. I'm not sure the old fridge I'm using is cooling the beer enough, or maybe just too slowly. Judging by the temp on a thermometer I left in the fridge, it's at about 45 F.
The first batch I tried to keg was a stout I had brewed about 2 months ago. It's been in a secondary for about a month. Before racking it, I put the whole carboy in the fridge Monday and let it chill for about 24 hours. My plan was to fill a few bottles to set aside in case I wanted to give some away, and also to compare the bottle-carbed beer to that in the keg. Now, it seemed silly to me to rack it to a bottling bucket since I was going to be kegging most of it. So I just sanitized a few bottles, put some Cooper's tabs in them for carbonation, and prepared to rack the beer out of the carboy. But one thing I learned the hard way is that trying to rack from an autosiphon into the bottle without a bottling wand attached is not a good plan. I ended up overflowing the first bottle and spraying beer all over the place before I clamped the tubing down and got it stopped. Not wanting to repeat this step six more times, I just went ahead and racked the rest of it into the keg, and put the keg back into the fridge for a little while.
Before I tried my hand at carbonating the keg, I figured I'd try to find a way to fill the remaining bottles. I decided to try something similar to the solution listed in BierMuncher's bottle-filler thread. I attached my bottling wand to the picnic tap, attached it to the keg, and then attached the CO2 tank to the keg. This worked and I was able to fill the bottles. After capping those, I was ready to try carbonating the beer in the keg. I tried a method I read about, which was to turn the PSI up to about 35 PSI, and sit in a chair with the keg in my lap and rock it back and forth for several minutes. This is supposed to allow it to carbonate quickly so you don't have to wait so long before drinking. So after doing this I left the keg in the fridge for a little while to let the beer cool off. I didn't leave the C02 tank connected, but I didn't release the excess pressure from the keg either. After a little while, maybe an hour, I released some of the excess pressure from the keg tried dispensing beer from the picnic tap. The first glass was all foam, and the next two weren't much better. After the foam died down, I tried it. It tasted reasonably good, but in spite of all the foam the beer really wan't as carbed as I would have liked.
The next day I tried another glass of my stout. It was a bit better carbed and less foamy, but not much. But now I had another beer I wanted to try kegging, so I figured I'd try this one and see how it turned out. It was an IPA which was had been in the primary bucket for about a month. I had put this one in the fridge at the same time as the first beer to let it cool off. At this time I decided to try connecting my stout to the kegerator tap and see if it worked. Unfortunately I found that beer was dripping from the hex-connector at the shank running through the fridge door. It made a big mess, so I just disconnected it and gave up on that plan for the moment. I think there's supposed to be a washer between the connector and the shank that must of been lost, so I'll have to look for one later. Fortunately, I still had my picnic tap, so I just cleaned it up and switched it to the other keg.
Again I intended to bottle a few beers before kegging the rest. This time I tried racking the beer from the bucket into a few bottles with the bottling wand attached to the auto-siphon. This didn't make a mess, but it didn't work either because the wand got gummed up with trub from the bucket. So again i just racked it all to the keg and used my BMBF clone to fill a few bottles. When that was done, I tried carbing the beer in the keg. This time I set it to about 30 PSI and only shook the keg for about 1 minute. It still had too much foam and not enough carbonation for my liking. I also decided I'd try leaving the keg and tank connected in the fridge for a little while with the gas set to about 12 PSI and see if the cold and gas would allow the beer to carb a little better. But what I found was that after an hour or so of that, my CO2 starts to leak from the coupling between the tank and the regulator. I think that either the washer between the tank and the regulator needs replacing, or perhaps the entire regulator. So I don't dare leave the tank connected and turned on for a long period of time.
At this point I think I'll check the beer tonight and see if it's any better. If it's not, maybe I'll see if I can replace the washers and stop the leak and see if I can carb it using the slower methods. I guess if all else fails I can prime in the keg and just use the CO2 tank to dispense if I can't figure out a better to get it carbed the way I like. I have to say so far that I like not having to clean and sanitize 50 bottles for every batch, but then again I've never had a complaint about the carbonation levels of my bottled beer. Hopefully I can be patient enough to figure out how to get this to work better.
Anyway, here's my ideas as to what I might be doing wrong. Sorry about turning this into a small novel.
Feel free to comment or add to this list as you see fit:1. Maybe I'm just not being patient enough. Maybe a slow method of force carbonation would works better. Unfortunately I don't think it's a good idea to leave the gas on for a long time until I can make sure the connections aren't going to leak. Hopefully the washer is the problem. Money's in short supply right now, so I definitely won't be getting a new regulator right away.
2. Perhaps my lines are too short. The picnic tap I'm using only has about 3 feet of tubing. I've been reading that shorter lines can cause excess foam.
3. I'm not sure the old fridge I'm using is cooling the beer enough, or maybe just too slowly. Judging by the temp on a thermometer I left in the fridge, it's at about 45 F.
