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Prepping Multiple Kegs for Party
Ok, I need some help here. I'm jumping into the kegging system and I've gotten some great advice here and at my LHBS. I need some more!
I'm having a large party in June. I'll have no problem brewing enough beer for it and I have 8 kegs I can use. What I don't know is this. How do I prep the kegs so that when one runs out I can tap another one that won't be flat?
Just plan enough ahead so that you have already carbed them all up prior to the party. You can do it one at a time or you can build a gas manifold or a series of gas splitters to hook them all up at once. Set the pressure and leave them for a couple weeks (the easy way, because you can't shake and rock 8 kegs at once.
You'll have to keep them all cold too.
Kegs will hold their carbonation indefinitely if sealed properly.
If you didn't want to force carb them you could prime and carb like you would bottles.
That's what bruguru does and he'll be able to chime in about that.
So that is at least how I understand your question.
I do prime my kegs, at least for now, im sure i'll force carb later but old habits are hard to break. Just boil 2 cups of water, and use a half a cup of table sugar disolved in the water.(i'm sure you know this, but take it off the burner as you disolve the sugar, or you will get a brown solution.)
Put the keg where you would put your bottles to carb up, and after a week your beer should be all carbed up depending on what kind of yeast your using, it could take 2 weeks. Hook up the liquid out lines and when the kegs are cold, I use the pressure already in the keg to pour my first few pints. When the beer is down to a trickle, I attach the gas in lines at 10psi. Keeps it at a perfect carb level at least for me. You could also release the pressure, then attach the gas in line at 10psi whatever you like. Just don't hook the gas line up right away, If your carbed keg has more pressure than 10psi you could get beer in your gas line. At least that's how I understand it.
+1 on bruguru's advice that is how I do all my keggs as well. I recently brewed for a wedding where I went through about 8 kegs. I brewed waaay in advance kegged using the priming sugar and was good to go for the big day. The hardest part of the wedding day was keeping the kegs that were in the lineup next cold as only three kegs at a time would fit into my little kegorator thing. I just ended up using a trash can in the back filled with ice. At the fastest time I was using a keg every 45 min and that was almost not enough time to cool a keg in the can so it was ready to be served.
ID
One issue I could see with priming kegs for natural carb would be stirring up the sediment upon transport.
If you really had time to plan in advance you could force carb each keg and jump the beer to a new keg and have nearly complete sediment free beer to serve. Most untrained people get a little skeptical by cloudy beer sometimes.
I did the same thing a year ago. 
I, also, use sugar to prime kegs, about 2.5 oz, then put them under 25# CO2, through the "out" post.
When they won't take any more CO2, they are ready. Takes about 4-6 days.
Just keep them charged up to 20#. I agree with Brewchez on the transport issues.
With this method you should have them in place several days in advance.
You can split the line from your CO2 tank into 4 lines to 4 kegs.
Put all the kegs in containers full of ice that morning or very early afternoon.
Remember that the important part of the keg to keep cold is the bottom 1'.
Get 4 sampler picnic taps. Release the pressure before hooking up your CO2 at serving pressure.
Then as the kegs run empty, just change the CO2 lines & transfer the taps.
4 beers on tap all the time.
Here's my keg-in--box. Kinda gives you the idea. Except this one uses the little CO2 cartridge.
I don't use it anymore.
when I'm serving kegs at parties, I get there about 4hours before the party begins, and put the kegs on Ice to let the sediment fall to the bottom again. you will still get the first 2 or three pints with sediment, but after that it clears up nicely.
on a personal note, it does not matter if you transport the Mac and Jacks, it's supposed to be cloudy. Another reason to make this beer your party beer of choice. (Man, that brewery should pay me money.)
Wow! Thanks so much for all the detail. I knew that I could pre-carb (what else would the big guys be doing right?) But I wanted to be sure how to do it.
The great thing is that the party is here at my house so I don't have to worry about transport. But thanks for the info because now I when I do...I'll know what to think about. I also have room for 5 kegs in my kegerator (or will if I ever get it done!) and plenty of big containers to ice the kegs.
I have a 4 way manifold so I can carb 4 at a time...should be good there. Of course I'll have to carb 3 at a time so I have at least one I'm tapping off of to drink in the mean time! 
I'm tempted to sugar carb a keg or two to see how it turns out!
So I'm pretty sure I'm all set. I can't thank you guys enough for all the great advice!!
Well, the brewing for the party is in full swing and going according to planned. I have the brown forced carbing now. I'm going to keg two wheats this weekend - an American Wheat and an Orange/Corriander Wheat - that I'm going to caste condition.
I also brewed some root beer last night for the kidlets. Funny, the 10 - 22 yr olds are more excited about that than the beer. I'm starting to wonder if they're my kids at all!
The Stout I have on tap is never going to see the party. I'm enjoying it way too much. Some friends are coming over tonight so I expect to have a dead keg by the end. I can make more!
Jexie,
I made root beer for our big shindig. It was the best I've ever had. At the end, it had the least in it of any of the kegs.
Course, there were a bunch of kids, and they thought it was WAY COOL to pour themselves a "beer" on tap.
Someone started mixing root beer & stout. I tried it, hummmm 
.
as a kids we used to order a root beer at a restaurant and ask for it them to go easy on the root, hoping they'd give us actual beer...
Hogarthe wrote:
as a kids we used to order a root beer at a restaurant and ask for it them to go easy on the root, hoping they'd give us actual beer...
Hiilarious!! Sounds like something we would have done. I'm going to test out the root beer tonight before the Wings - Sharks game 7. Go Wings!
I'm also going to make a ginger ale this weekend.
I'm cask conditioning the two wheats and force carbing the brown. I still have to keg my lager.
BTW, speaking of the lager, I have it lagering in my lager box in the basement. Should I leave it be or should I keg it and let it lager longer? I still have to carb it. Should I carb it and let it lager more? The party is June 18th so I have a bit of time but do need to think about this.
Jexie wrote:
I also brewed some root beer last night for the kidlets. Funny, the 10 - 22 yr olds are more excited about that than the beer. I'm starting to wonder if they're my kids at all!
Holy Crap!!! I just realized this post said 10 - 22 yr olds. NO NO NO... it's 18 - 22 yr olds!!!
I would never give a 10 yr old beer! And I especially wouldn't post about it!
Geeze Louise!
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