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keg carbonation
High,
There are two things that you should do, when carbonating a keg of beer.
1.) Get your beer as cold as you can possibly get it
2.) Carbonate through the speer, the beer oulet connection of your keg coupler.
This way, the CO2 is forced to travel through the beer, much like aerating your wort.
On some couplers, you do have to install a cap on the original CO2 pressure inlet.
A real professional outfit would have a coupler only used for carbonation with a pressure gauge on the CO2 inlet connection.
3.) Be patient. It takes time to thoroughly get the beer saturated with CO2 and there is nothing to replace that factor. So forget about what you have read about the 1/2 hour-and it`s-done routine.That is the same buloney as the drinkable-mead-in-2-weeks recipies.
I guess I carbonate completely different. I use one of two methods. Either I keg the beer and set psi to 40 for 24 hours then turn it down to 20 psi for 24 hours. Or, I set the psi to 30 and leave it for 48 hours. My beer is always carbonated, and I never have any issues.
To carb a keg I usauly boil water like I am going to batch prime a 5 gal batch of bottled beer. Add only 1/2 of the usual sugar, cool the water, add it to my keg and then rack the beer on top of that. I only have one tap right now and I mostly brew way more than I can drink so I have alot of kegs sitting around waiting for their turn in the fridge. As far as constant temp or cold conditoning the kegs I don't have the space, all my kegs sit at room temp while they condition and I have never had a prob. Great head retention wonderful complex beer, If it went into the keg tasting good then it comes out bubbly and tasting great.
ID
I've kegged about 3 to 4 times. Looking to go from 1 tapper to 2 or more. Do you need more CO2 tanks or do you just split the lines? I currently ave a single pole kegerator. I'm tired of switchinh my kegs.
All you need to do is split the line. Just keep in mind when you change pressure on the regulator, it will effect both lines.
Without going with a dual regulator, you will want to shut off the line connected to the idle keg while you carb a second one if using a different pressure. You can do this either by having a shutoff valve before the split, or just disconnect it from the keg.
If you have a balanced system, (meaning you carb and serve at the same pressure) then you have nothing to worry about, hook em up and wait for the new keg to fully carb (usually 10-14 days this way)
I keg the same way as IronDavy. I have a second CO2 tank, so I pop it with about 20-25# pressure & keep it there for about 3-4 days. Putting it outside after a couple days in cool/cold weather will help the CO2 dissolve, but don't let it freeze. Also, I charge the keg through the liquid post. That way I can bleed off the oxygen.
Usually ready to tap in 4 days. Be sure to let the excess pressure off before hooking up to serving pressure.
Also, check valves are your friend.
I have a friend that has several kegs running off of the same line. make sure that you have some sort of check valve to keep pressure from coming out of a keg and moving into another. He had a keg of stout and a keg of pale ale hooked up on the same line with no check valve and somehow he got some beer in the line and it moved all the way over to his pale ale keg. The beer tasted OK but from then on the Pale Ale turned into more of a black ale. Black color goes a very long way in a lighter medium.
Get some sort of splitter with check valves and ball valves. I can't seem to get the link to work but this is the address and what I would use.
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_i … ts_id=1160
If you get on of the 4 way splitters then you can just shut off the ones that you are not using and then you have a built in room to expand.
ID
I just kegged an oatmeal stout last week, and decided that I wanted a softer carbonation to it than I usually get, and have left it at service pressure since kegging, and I'm very happy with the results. It is only at 11 Psi, but like I said, softer carbonation. As of last night, it was getting a really nice, thin and rich head on it.
Generally, when I try to force carb, my beers always seem to have "squarer" bubbles for a week anyhow, so I'm content just drinking store beer and the occasional 6 oz. pull from the "recent experiment".
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