Room temp keg carbonating & gelatin fining

[BelligerentOwl]

Greetings!

Just bought a 1.75 gallon Cannonball keg and will be getting a 5 gallon CO2 tank to carbonate and serve. In a given 5 gallon batch I will be kegging 1.75 and bottling the rest. I have no means of refrigerating a carboy or larger keg at this time. I have some questions:

Carbonating the Keg
Can it be done effectively at room temperature and if so, what if any adjustments need to be made? I was hoping to burst carbonate.

Gelatin Fining
I was also hoping to gelatin fine my beer in the carboy, but again I have no means to cold crash and will be working at room temperature. can this be done and if so, what differences/adjustments am I looking at?

Thanks!

 

[peanasky]

You definitely can carbonate at room temp, I do this often for my back-up kegs. Use a fancy chart like this one from Kegerators.com to find the psi. I usually set my room-ish (basement) temp kegs to 30psi, and shake the crap out of it. I let it sit for a few minutes, then shake again. I do this around 5 times.

When you do go to chill and serve, make sure to bleed off the pressure and reduce to serving pressure.

 

[uncleben113]

You can absolutely carbonate your beer at room temperature but you will use more CO2 that way. CO2 dissolves more readily in cold beverages so you'll need more CO2 in a room temperature beer.

As for using gelatin, you shouldn't run into any problems. It can be added to a fermenter or the keg. Here's a little more in depth info on using gelatin

 

[Murphys_Law]

You can use corn sugar, DME, etc to naturally carb in a keg at room temp. Find a good priming calculator (i.e. Brewers Friend) to see how much to add (you don't need to add as much as you would if you were bottling the same amount of beer). Also, hook up your keg to the CO2 and give it a few good bursts to make sure you have a good seal.

Think of it like you're naturally carbing one big bottle of beer!