How do you gas your kegs?

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I used to force carb, got sick of being "near enough".
These days, as my household beer consumption has slowed, I have kegs carbing up at serving pressure in another fridge outside.

Carbonation is always perfect, plus it gives them some conditioning time, to round off the edges.
 
Crusty said:
Ha ha, nice one.
I believe a kegged beer is better at week 2 than week 1 & at it's best from week 3.
The first week is still too green IMO so I usually start drinking from week 2.
Was talking to (at) my missus last night regarding this.

For malt forward beers, I find more time leads to a better beer. I have an American Amber on tap right now, and after week 4, the malt has really rounded out.

For hop forward beers, you can lose that hop aroma from very early on. If they get too old in the tooth, they lose their zest and zing.

For beers that are a combination of both, you need to find the happy medium.
 
Crusty said:
Ha ha, nice one.
I believe a kegged beer is better at week 2 than week 1 & at it's best from week 3.
The first week is still too green IMO so I usually start drinking from week 2.
When it starts getting really good, it's about to blow ;)

In answer to the OP, 10 PSI is about 70Kpa.

Could be a little low if your beer is going flat while youre drinking it?

I dispense at my carbonating pressure which is 90 kpa.

You May want to look up balancing your keg system, or get flow controllers.

I do normally rapid carb by putting the beer on 300Kpa For 24 hrs
 
With six taps I'm not in a huge hurry to get my kegs gassed so I just connect at serving temp in the fridge and wait.
 
I usually throw 300 kpa at them for a minute, shut gas off and rock end to end till the guage hits 100. Then in fridge, preferably around 7-10, beer style dependent, on 100 for 2 days. I then disconnect and just enjoy the beer till pressure makes the pour too slow, then add a quick hit of gas at 100 and repeat where necessary.

Works for my palate, means I can pour beer almost straight away but a few days for proper carbonation and suspended yeast to drop out makes a massive difference to flavour abd mouthfeel.

Since kegging, I've started fining again. When bottling, the carb time on top of my bulk conditioning time was enough
 
Haven't looked into it, but I'm unconvinced carbonation by a forced method is the same as by the @serving pressure method or by natural priming carbonation... In terms of the end result in the glass.

I've always liked the density of the head from bottled beers, carbonating the kegs at serving pressure seems to be closest too this. Force carbonating for me has larger bubbles that break up more easily. I've also got a couple accidentally over carbed kegs at the moment and they pour frothy but there is minimal coming out of solution compared to the correctly carbonated beers, it's weird. Someone got some science about dissolution of CO2 into beer and if there can be varied results if the same volumes of CO2 were achieved in the same beer at the same temperature but carbonated over a different time period?
 
300Kpa for 24 hrs - works for me too, but I like the idea of not having to release pressure that potentially has blows out some flavour so manticle's hybrid approach makes sense to me.

I over carbed via force carbing a couple of times which makes me hesitant to go back to it.
 
DJ_L3ThAL said:
Haven't looked into it, but I'm unconvinced carbonation by a forced method is the same as by the @serving pressure method or by natural priming carbonation... In terms of the end result in the glass.

I've always liked the density of the head from bottled beers, carbonating the kegs at serving pressure seems to be closest too this. Force carbonating for me has larger bubbles that break up more easily. I've also got a couple accidentally over carbed kegs at the moment and they pour frothy but there is minimal coming out of solution compared to the correctly carbonated beers, it's weird. Someone got some science about dissolution of CO2 into beer and if there can be varied results if the same volumes of CO2 were achieved in the same beer at the same temperature but carbonated over a different time period?
I've had the same experiences and the only theory I have is that the force carbonation method might break up some of the proteins responsible for head retention. I haven't looked into it properly, though
 
Does anyone use one of these,

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=876

And if so, what are your thoughts.

I force carb 90% of my kegs with the Ross Method but I do notice that immediately after the rock and roll the beer does have bigger bubbles than if it is primed in the keg and left to carbonate naturally.

I also notice that if I force carbonate and put the keg in the kegorator and after trying the beer I go away with work for a week that when I return the beer has fine bubbles in the head, similar to keg priming???
 
buckerooni said:
I over carbed via force carbing a couple of times which makes me hesitant to go back to it.
Same here. So I was purposely under-carbing via force carbonation - and then having to wait a few days for it to balance out.

Bought a slab of beer, to enable one keg to carb up at serving pressure without being out of beer, and now I have enough time in my beer schedule to carb up kegs at standard serving pressure.
 
I usually do 48hrs at 230kpa beer is at 3deg, always end up with nice fine bubbles and great head. My question is, how long for 16l of beer? I came up short on this brew and only ended up with16l in the keg. Does the volume of beer change the carbonation process?
 
It would, simplistically you could just proportion the time by the percentage less beer you have (ie. Do it for 40.4 hours), but I'm not sure if headspace would play a factor. It shouldn't since carbonating is a relatively slow process (even over 24-48hrs) that it could be considered at steady state.

Note: not realising this is why I have two overcarbonated kegs on my hands. I had a leak at the disconnect which more or less flattened both kegs. So smart me thought I'd hook up at 300kPa for 24 hours (how I USED to carbonate), forgetting 1/4 of the keg had been drunk. Got nothing but froth soup out of pours and still havent managed to degas enough. Just turned gas off on those kegs and pour from them hoping it will balance back to normal after a bit of drinking!

You really can't beat the set and forget (or natural carbing if its easier for you). The tiny amount of patience and forward planning required gives much more confidence than the forced methods can.
 
Cheers, I was thinking along the same lines, figure if it's under carbed I could just hook it back up for 2 hours, check it and adjust if need be. I have done this before when I ran out of gas and had no idea how far in to the 48hrs it had run out, I sampled and it was under carbed so I just hooked it back up and checked it every couple of hours until I was happy with it
 
dicko said:
That would work OK I guess, not much different than carbing via the liquid tube, just would be faster as the bubbles would be smaller and therefore total surface area greater. $139 though! you could make one for about $40 --

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2-micron-Stainless-steel-Aeration-Diffusion-Stone-for-the-home-brew-hobbyist-/321531539094?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item4adcc5ee96

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Brand-new-Cornelius-Type-keg-Ball-Lock-Gas-Post-Poppet-Female-Thread-/111180838244?pt=AU_Barware&hash=item19e2e4f564

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Cornelius-Type-Keg-Lid-with-O-Ring-/271190099514?pt=AU_Barware&hash=item3f2430863a


dicko said:
I force carb 90% of my kegs with the Ross Method but I do notice that immediately after the rock and roll the beer does have bigger bubbles than if it is primed in the keg and left to carbonate naturally.

I also notice that if I force carbonate and put the keg in the kegorator and after trying the beer I go away with work for a week that when I return the beer has fine bubbles in the head, similar to keg priming???
Something to do with the forming of Carbonic Acid...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid

This takes time over just dissolving CO2 in solution*

*I think
 
I've massively over-carbed when I've rapid carbed partial kegs... there is something funny going on with the additional headspace.
 
I've only carbed a half keg once.

Did at same time as full keg. 30 psi for 24 and 48 hrs respectively. Full keg perfect. Half keg way over carbed.
 
Hmm seems like a experiment is in order. I might carb some water in a half filled 19L keg and a full 9L keg for same time and pressure and posts results!!
 
I've been chucking boiled dextrose in my kegs and leaving for a couple of weeks lately, less effort and I like the product better!
 
So how about carbing a 9ltr keg.
It will be full as against a half full 19ltr, so does it take less time to carbonate?
 
DJ_L3ThAL said:
Hmm seems like a experiment is in order. I might carb some water in a half filled 19L keg and a full 9L keg for same time and pressure and posts results!!
pcmfisher said:
So how about carbing a 9ltr keg.
It will be full as against a half full 19ltr, so does it take less time to carbonate?
Happy to test this and post results, unless someone has already?
 
Back
Top