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Kegging,CO2,Carbonation 101 -Help

Hello My Friendly Experts; I am relatively new to kegging and I need some advice on carbonation. I have tried a home brew in a recycled pepsi keg pumped up to 50 PSI for 5-

7 days and NO caronation. I tried a secondary ferement inside the kegs which worked but I fought tons of foam...maybe a little bit too much C02?? I would love not too have to bottle my beer to obtain the perfect bubbles/head but can anyone tell me how to carbonate in the geg?? Do CO2 stones work? Thx in advance for your help. Reply here or e-mail me @ snipped-for-privacy@dccnet.com If you haven't already guessed, remove the NOCRAPPINSPAM from my e-mail adress. Thx; BCGary
Reply to
BCGary
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Carbonating kegs is extraordinarily easy:

  1. Cool beer down to really cold temps. A cold solution will much more readily accepts a dissolved gas than a warm one. I keep my beer fridge at 38 degrees (that's farenheit).

  1. Consult a carbonation table. Know what level of carbonation you want. For an Ale, you want moderate carbonation, for the most part, meaning you want to dissolve 2.5 volumes of CO2/liter. To do that in my fridge, at 38 degrees, I need a CO2 pressure of between 11 and 12 PSI.

  2. Hook up the gas line to the IN port on the keg (which you should now have full of beer), open the bleed valve (or press down on the OUT port poppet if you don't have one) and let the incoming CO2 purge the headspace of any oxygen. 30 seconds should be more than enough time. Close the bleed valve.

  1. Let the keg sit for five to seven days. After that, you'll be golden.

If you aren't getting any carbonation, you probably have a leak somewhere you need to track down.

Foaming problems are usually due to either overcarbonation (common using the high-pressure/shake the keg method) or improper line length on your tap lines. You need to balance the pressure in your serving line to that within the keg.

Reply to
NobodyMan

NobodyMan; Thx very much for the reply. I believe my biggest problem is impatience. I naively thought that forced carbination happened pretty much instantly. I will try your method and post the results. On the other topic of foaming, you mentioned something about balancing the pressur on the serving line. Can you pls elaborate on this? I have an adjustable flow tap but I find that in order to limit the foam I have to have the flow cut back so much that it takes forever to fill a gas. This is at a keg pressure of around 11 PSI and using a 6' line with a 3/16" I.D. Again, any advice is appreciated. Thx; BCGary

snipped-for-privacy@none.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Reply to
BCGary

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 03:03:36 -0000, BCGary said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

3/16" line is about 2 psi/foot, so you have about 12 psi resistance and only 11 psi in the system. If 12 psi is correct for the temperature you keep your beer at, cut the line a little. I'd start with 6", then cut back an inch at a time if it needs a little shorter line.

You ARE using beer line, not plain old plastic tubing, right? (If it's not beer line, you have no idea what the resistance is.)

See

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for a discussion of how to balance your system.

Reply to
Al Klein

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