Forced Carbonation Of Hot Beer In A Keg

[Tony]

With my ventures to put beer on tap at my bar i will have to go the hot keg with a couple of coils in a glycol bath in a small fridge. Its the only way its going to happen!

I have a single tap font but will be getting a 2 tap flooded unit to do the job!

I have found that beer when its cold will gas up perfectly in 3 days @ 250 to 300 KPA without shaking the keg. I have 50 liter kegs so this is out of the question. I only weigh 78KG

Does anyone out there use this standing forced carbonation method on hot kegs to gas them up?

How long does it take and what pressures do you use?

The other road to follow is priming the kegs but this produces yeast and kind of cancells out the point in getting my filtering gear up and running properly.

cheers

 

[Wortgames]

Hi Tony, I'd like to know this too, just out of curiosity.

To my mind, you should still follow the standard force carbonation method for your desired carbonation - you'd just be talking about much higher pressures. At 20C you'd need about 190kpa to carb to 2.5 volumes (and it would probably take a week or so).

To keep the system 'balanced' you'd obviously need much more serving resistance to slow the pour, but then with a temprite or chill plate you probably already have much more distance and resistance anyway.

I could be wrong though so I'd like to hear any real-world experience, but this sounds right to me.

 

[Tony]

one other question........ where can i get a temprite from?

on the coopers site it says that from a 50 liter keg through a temprite, 300kpa may be required.

cheers

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

Hi Tony, I'd like to know this too, just out of curiosity.

To my mind, you should still follow the standard force carbonation method for your desired carbonation - you'd just be talking about much higher pressures. At 20C you'd need about 190kpa to carb to 2.5 volumes (and it would probably take a week or so).

To keep the system 'balanced' you'd obviously need much more serving resistance to slow the pour, but then with a temprite or chill plate you probably already have much more distance and resistance anyway.

I could be wrong though so I'd like to hear any real-world experience, but this sounds right to me.

With my current experiences working with wine and the likes I would think you may waste a lot of time and gas trying to carbonate. All sparkling wine we do in the workplace is carbonated cold (0 degree's and lower) and under pressure in 20 - 40k vessels. I know from experince with still white wine not under pressure, it is difficult and time consuming to adjust when it is above 20 degree's. Do you have a freezer you could put it in overnight? Then force carb in one hit.

This may help. BYB

 

[domonsura]

I tried gassing a warm keg a few weeks ago to see if it would work a few weeks ago Tony (cause I was impatient for a beer), it didn't seem to want to hold on to any of the gas until I had chilled it. I won't be trying it again.

 

[Wortgames]

on the coopers site it says that from a 50 liter keg through a temprite, 300kpa may be required.

Well, according to Promash, 300kpa at 26 degrees would give you about 3 volumes of carbonation - so that seems perfectly reasonable to me, albeit at the higher end. So I reckon my theory stands.


Domonsura, I'm sure it would be much harder to carbonate thousands of litres of warm wine. For a start, Champagne is carbonated to something like 8 volumes of CO2 - far more than any beer. Therefore the pressures involved at ambient temperatures would be enormous - something like 870kpa at 25C.

I doubt there are many 20-40,000 litre wine vessels around that are designed to handle those sorts of pressures, and as you point out, the time involved in doing it would make it totally impractical for a commercial enterprise. Far easier to refrigerate.

In Tony's example though, as a home brewer with hot kegs and a temprite type dispense system, I don't see any reason you couldn't just carry the numbers through. The trick would be to keep the pressure constant, try to give the keg a week or two under the appropriate pressure (eg 200kpa) before tapping, and make sure there's enough resistance in the system to control the pour - which it sounds like there would be.

 

[Tony]

I still dont know where to get a temprite from....... actually i need 2

I found a great 100 foot stainless coil with 25 foot 3/16 choker and fittings but its in america on ebay.

cheers

 

[Ross]

I still dont know where to get a temprite from....... actually i need 2

I found a great 100 foot stainless coil with 25 foot 3/16 choker and fittings but its in america on ebay.

cheers

Tony, I can get you anything you want - Just let me know exactly what you are looking for...

Give me a call...

cheers Ross

 

[Sammus]

re pressures, the hbd guide to keg balancing has a formula you might want to try, dont know how accurate it is in the 'hot' range though. You will also need to do a few yank unit convos too, nothing the online converter cant handle though. good luck.

S