Tips To Clean & Sanitize Your Kegs, Carbonate Your Beers Fast, and Increase The Shelf Life of Your Beer...
Dear Home Brewer,
If you are looking to learn how to keg your own beer, you've landed on the right page... I'm about to cover everything you need to know to get started kegging your beer from disassembling your kegs to clean and sanitize all the way to carbonating your beer...
Not long ago I was doing research trying to figure out what I needed to keg my home brew and I couldn't tell you the difference between a ball lock or pin lock keg, but luckily for you I have figured it out and now I'm sharing it all right here...
So let's get started....
If you are familiar with any of my tranings you know I like to start from the top down... the whole point of kegging is to get CO2 into our beer... where most brewers get confused figuring out where to set your regulator's psi, and balancing your kegging system (hose lengths, hose diameters and what not)... and to better understand kegging you have to break it down into two parts.... carbonating the beer and dispensing...
Carbonating your beer is simply a matter of getting enough CO2 to dissolve into your beer... every beer style is different and I cover many of these in my training programs... Dispensing your beer on the other hand is about getting the beer from the keg to your glass... these are two different events and if you can think of them that way, as separate events, then you'll have an easier time understanding how to keg your beer...
The problems you'll come across when kegging your beer will happen when you want either a low carbonated or highly carbonated home brew... we'll cover these in a second... but first let's talk about getting CO2 into your beer...
How To Carbonate Your Kegged Beer
Think of carbonating your beer as filling up a pool with water... and you have the option of making the pool shallow or deep... well carbonation of your beer can be either low or high (shallow or deep)... the easiest way to do that is to simply set your regulator at around 9 to 12 psi... exactly where depends on where you need to be to properly dispense beer and how much CO2 you want in your beer...
In my case I have a 5 ft long and 3/16" inside diameter beer hose... so I can dispense beer at around 9 to 12 psi... if I set my regulator at 9 psi then I'll get a lower carbonated beer than if I set it at 12 psi... If I set the regulator at this range it takes about one and a half to two weeks to fully carbonate your beer... this would be like cracking open the spigot and letting water from the garden hose flow into the pool... it would take days to fill... I could instead go to both my next door neighbors, borrow their garden hoses and have three times as much water filling up my pool so it fills up in only a day or two...
Well similarly, I can set my regulator to 27 to 30 psi (about 3 times higher than where I normally dispense) for the first 24 to 48 hours to get CO2 into my beer and then bring the regulator down to 9 to 12 psi, my dispensing pressure... Notice how all of this is independent of dispensing beer... you can carbonate your beer as slow or fast as you'd like by setting the regulator low or high...
How To Dispense Kegged Beer
Now dispensing is a bit more involved and can vary depending on your setup and the beer styles you are trying to serve from the keg... a typical setup uses about 5 ft of beer hose with a 3/16" inside diameter... the tap is usually about 1 or 2 feet above the keg... with a typical setup like this you can dispense beer by setting your regulator to 9 to 12 psi...
Shorter hoses require less pressure than longer hoses... smaller diameter hoses require more pressure from the regulator to push beer through it... and the higher the tap is from the keg the higher the pressure of the regulator needs to be to push the beer up...
So how does this all come together?
Well let's start out with this typical setup... if you set your regulator at around 9 to 12 psi, the beer will get and maintain about 2 to 2.6 volumes of CO2 over the long run...
SCENARIO 1: if you set your psi around 9 to 12 psi from the beginning it takes about one and a half to two weeks...
SCENARIO 2: you set your psi 3 times higher (27 to 30 psi) for one day and then back down to 9 to 12 psi... if you try to serve the beer right away you will get an undercarbonated beer, but over time the beer will carbonate to the same levels as if you had just set it at 9 to 12 psi... this cuts the time it takes to carbonate your beer by about half the time...
SCENARIO 3: you set your psi 3 times higher for 3 or more days... the beer could become over carbonated and you may need to de-gas the beer, which isn't fun... you'll have to turn off the CO2 regulator and release gas by pulling on the pressure release valve... then wait about 24 hours for the amount of CO2 dissolved int the beer to balance with the amount of CO2 in the headspace... since you removed CO2 from the headspace, some CO2 from the beer will go to the headspace thus lowering the carbonation of the beer... you'll have to dispense (turn the regulator back on to 9 to 12 psi) and repeat if necessary until you get to normal carbonation levels...
The scenarios above assume that your temperature is constant, hose length and diameter is constant and distance between ket and tap is constant... and with a typical setup you are kind of stuck on the range between 2 to 2.6 volumes of CO2... so what if you want more or less carbonation?
Advanced Kegging Techniques
Then you'll have to play around with ways to dispense your beer... if you want to serve a lower carbonated beer, then you'll need to set your regulator lower than your typical dispensing pressure range... which means that if you want to be able to dispense beer with less pressure you'll need to get either a shorter hose, a wider hose, reduce the height distance between your keg and your tap handle, or a combination of all three...
If you want a higher carbonated beer, then you'll need to set your regulator higher than your typical dispensing range... which means you'll need to get a longer hose, a narrower inside diameter, increase the height distance between the keg and the tap, or a combination of all three...
There are ways around it and more advanced methods to play with this, but these are the basics to get you started... separate carbonating your beer and dispensing your beer and you'll find it easier to keg your first few batches...
Common Kegging Mistakes
Now... some of the most common mistakes I see people make is not cleaning their kegs thoroughly and not purging the kegs once you get the beer into it...
Purging a keg is simple... when you transfer your beer into the keg and seal it, you will have air(think oxygen) left over in the head space... the way to get that air out is to pull the pressure relief valve for about 30 seconds... since CO2 is heavier than air, the air will come out of the keg until you have nothing but CO2... no air in the keg means no oxygen... no oxygen gives your beer a longer shelf life...
Last, I really just want to throw this out there... I was really confused by the difference between a ball lock and pinlock keg... and in one of my last visits to my local home brew supply store, I overheard a customer ask the same question I had in my head before I got my kegging system... "What's the difference between a ball lock and pin lock keg? Is one better, performance wise? quality wise?"... well it turns out there really is no difference in performance between a ball lock and pin lock... the only difference is how the posts of the keg are connected to your gas and beer hoses... that's it... (see pictures below)
You just have to commit to a type of keg because so you can use the same connectors... unless you want to deal with switching different connectors, pick one and stick with it... I chose ball lock.... why? I heard they were more common... is it true... still trying to find out...
Well that should be enough to get you started...
Cheers!
Jorge
PS Don't forget to like this page and download my video on How To Build a Kegerator below!
