Happy sunday funday everybody. A few questions for you BA's: What would be the best was to fill the keg with CO2 before racking the beer into keg? I assume with everything clean and assembled, through the gas in, and with the lid off. A friend recommended that I force carb @ 30psi for two days and go down to 12psi for t. he remaining time in the keg. My question is does the beer have to be a certain temperature before I rack into the keg and force carb? What temperature should I maintain while I force carb @ 30psi (west coast red ale)? Thank you all for your time, cheers!
Yes except for the last part. Lid should be on. Vent it a few times and your keg is full of CO2. It can be at any temp when you rack. It doesn't really matter as long as you consult a carbonation table to figure out what psi to set it for a given temp and volumes CO2 desired.
Probably the surest, though certainly not the cheapest way to fill the keg with CO2 is to fill it to overflowing with water, install the lid, then push the water out with gas. You'll be left with a keg full of nothing but CO2. The problem is that, unless you push the beer from the fermenter to fhe keg with CO2, you have to remove the lid to rack the beer into it. Fortunately, CO2 is heavier than air, so you can fill/burp a few times, and enough of it will stay in place to satisfy our needs.
To fill the keg with CO2, I hook my gas line up to the beer out side and push CO2 in while holding up the relief valve. My carbonation method is constantly evolving. I'm to the point that I just fill the keg, put 50lbs on it, shake it for about 20 seconds, then put it in the kegerator to chill (without lines hooked up). After the keg is at fridge temp, I release some pressure and hook it up. It's usually at adequate carbonation right at that point and at ideal carbonation within a day or so. My old method was to do 35psi for about 28 hours, then dial down to serving pressure. This worked too. It just wasn't as quick.
I like to carb at serving pressure. It may be a little slower, but for me its easier and more predictable then hitting it with high pressure and then going back to try and fine tune the carbonation after a day or 2. There is no risk of over carbing the beer as long as you have a balanced system where you can carb and serve your beer at the same pressure. most people go with ~5ft of 3/8th in tubing for serving lines, this gives you a serving pressure of about 10-12psi which is a great carbing pressure for beer at 38 deg. If you want to keep your beer warmer all you have to do is up the pressure (co2 is less soluble in warmer liquids) and get longer lines to balance the system.
