Should My Beverage Lines Be Connected?

[brewmathew]

Should I hook up my beverage lines immediately to my keg after racking or wait until carbing & conditioning is complete. In other words, will the beer in the lines carbonate and condition at all or the same rate as the actual beer in the keg.

The reason I am asking is that I am new to kegging and on my first kegs I was pouring large beers a few days after racking (even though they were not conditioned yet) to taste them. After a week or maybe two the beer was great and no complaints. Now in order to not waste homebrew, I am taking very small taste samples every few days but it seems like the conditioning and carbonating is taking forever. Is this just because I am still drinking the beer in the lines from the beginning and I need to get to the keg beer or is my beer really not ready?

Does this make sense?

 

[day_trippr]

Sure it makes sense, but it sounds like your actual problem is lack of patience

I have a separate carbonation fridge which only has gas lines, so I don't have first hand experience with what happens inside a beer line during carbonation.

But, intuitively, I doubt that beer in the liquid line will gain carbonation in anything approaching a timely manner - it's at the wrong end of the process. You're applying head pressure which has to diffuse down through the entire beer column just to get to the dip tube, and your faucet is another n feet from the end of the dip tube (in my case n = around 14 feet - including the dip tube and tubing). So anything coming out of the faucet will be the last to reach a carbonation goal.

As for time: in my experience it takes a full two weeks at serving temperature to reach a typical carbonation level of around 2.5 volumes of CO2, using a constant pressure defined by a carbonation chart or calculator for that beer temperature. And that's just for beers that finish around 1.010 - and beers that I want to hit 2.5 volumes. Higher volumes (for wits, for instance) take longer, as do higher FG brews: my big ass stouts that are in the 20+ point neighborhood take at least another week, often longer (hence the separate carbonation fridge).

Patience, grasshopper

Cheers!

 

[brewmathew]

So hook it up to gas. 2 to 3 weeks later connect beverage. Makes sense.

 

[DrunkleJon]

yes. It also keeps down accidental loss due to taps that get knocked or a failure if using picnic taps. It also stops you from sampling all of your beer before it is ready.

Best bet if you have room is to have an extra gas line or separate fridge for carbing while you have a keg on tap. It will keep you out of your carbing keg until it is ready and help your pipeline establish so you never have empty tap(s). In theory at least.

 

[BigFloyd]

If you just chill the keg, hook up gas at 10-12psi and leave it alone for 10-14 days before hooking a beer line to it, your patience will be rewarded.