Corny kegs

[Dean12]

Hi folks,
Been brewing from kits for years using pressure barrels and bottles I've now got fermentation cabinet with ink bird which is working brilliant
But looking at getting into corny kegs.

I've researched and know what I need to get and how to set up but just asking when using kegs do you use it like a pressure barrel? Follow the same kit instructions warm place for 2 days then cool place to condition etc

Thanks

Dean

 

[obscure]

Can you

Actually yes, and I have done so for several years. For low carbonation beers like Bitter or Mild or works pretty well as long as you have somewhere fairly cool to store them and I would recommend a flow control tap, as it can be a tad frothy otherwise, you will need a source of CO2 to dispense with I use a Soda Stream Cylinder and a mini regulator.

With beers I want to serve chilled I use a transfer cable (basically a piece of plastic tubing with ball lock connectors on each end and transfer under pressure into a smaller keg which will fit into my fridge.

That being said this is not the normal operating procedure for kegs, most people will have a dedicated keg fridge and will carbonate using a full size CO2 cylinder (and if you plan to do it this way you would be better off getting a full cylinder as Soda Stream Cylinders are an expensive way of buying CO2 fine if you are just using to dispense but not if you are looking to carbonate your beer as well).

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hi Dean. Just the same all the way through to when it’s finished fermenting.

You then transfer into the corny keg but there are options for carbonating:

You can add priming sugar, just the same as with pressure barrels and keep the corny keg at room temperature to carbonate (2 weeks is better than 2 days). Then serve from the corny keg using the built up pressure from secondary fermentation. If you run out of pressure you can add more priming sugar or inject a little CO2. Opening the corny keg to add more priming sugar has the disadvantage of allowing oxygen into your keg which is generally a bad idea and a really bad idea for very hoppy beers because they spoil far more easily.

Your second option is to carbonate using priming sugar as above but then use bottled CO2 to dispense. This is not much different to above except the pressure, carbonation level, and dispense speed will be maintained throughout.

Your third option is to not bother with priming sugar at all and just put the keg straight onto bottled CO2. The pressure of the CO2 will carbonate and dispense the beer.

There’s no particular benefit to these options except maybe the third option (forced carbonation) pushes out oxygen more quickly by you “burping” the keg when you put it on the gas.