General Kegging Tips and Tricks

Balance the system.

While some swear by yanking it up to 30 psi to carb then storing at 16 and serving at 6 and setting it back to 20 then dropping it to 4 etc., etc., etc., I find it a lot easier to use the Ron Popeil "set it and forget it" method. The only thing extra this entails for me is a few dollars in threaded hose connectors and a few more feet of hose.

What I do is determine what carb level I want for a particular beer, say 2.6. I know at 40 degrees that's about 13.5 psi. Going by the rule of thumb of a foot of 3/16" hose for every 2 psi, if I place a 7 foot hose on that tap and the liquid connector (hence the threaded connectors), I'm done. Let it carb and serve it at the same pressure. No messing with the gauges all the time. If the next beer is, say, a mild, and I want to carb it at 2, I set it to 7 psi, drop a 4 foot hose on there, and let it go.

Some may see that as more trouble than always changing pressures. I don't. I just find a balanced system where I'm not always opening the kegerator and changing pressures to be a lot easier to deal with. The extra expense of extra hose was worth it, to me.

 

There is more evaporation from kegging. I noticed this when a batch of beer just did not last as long anymore.
Must be evaporation. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

At the very end of the keg you can actually hear it evaporating. Pretty sad sound.

 

Waaaay too much work, IMO. I now use 6' lines on all my faucets. It's a good enough compromise so that I never need to change anything. Higher carbed beers pour just fine, while the lower carbed beers simply pour a bit more slowly. And no messing with pressure.

To the OP, get obsessive about leaks. Look for them any time you touch anything. Eventually, you'll be able to predict which parts are more prone to leaks and which activities are more likely to cause them. Then you can relax a bit knowing that you've got a handle on this. It can be a real PITA to come home to either an empty CO2 tank or an empty keg (accompanied by a big puddle of beer in the bottom of the keezer or, worse, on the floor)

 

I carb my Saisons to about 3.5 volumes. In my case, a 6' line would be like a fire hose.

 

Heh! Same here. When I follow a saison on tap with, say, an English bitter at 2 volumes, there's no "one size hose fits all" for me. To each their own, obviously, and some don't see it as a problem to change pressures all the time. I just find changing a hose when I change a keg to be much easier.

 

I'll second Mike on checking for leaks with soapy water. You'll see why when you blow through 5# of CO2 because one keg leaked overnight. I'd say it's the most frustrating part of kegging and potentially the most expensive upkeep when your seals fail you. Get comfy with keg lubing all your rings.

 

I change hoses every time, even if the replacement is the same length. It just fits my cleaning routine better, because I generally don't 'clean in place.'

 

Have a second bottle of CO2 on hand. Nothing sucks more than having friends over and being out of gas (or having a leak you didn't know about). And of course it'll be on a day/at a time when you can't run out and get your bottle refilled.

Use the Okieter (sp?) clamps on your connections. Those worm drive's can/do loosen up, and just don't seem to work as well.

Put the swivel connections on your hoses so you can use the threaded disconnects. Especially now that you have a beer gun. Make sure that the hose on the barb of these connections is tight, and that the nut is tight on the disconnect (I find most of my leaks come from these areas, and they will loosen as temperature fluctuates).

I have spare disconnects as well. never know when one will gunk up/break (mostly plastic after all). I also have an autosiphon and one barbed beer disconnect. I have these two hooked up. When cleaning a keg (and I may be playing with fire here, but its worked for 5+ years now), I hook up the beer disconnect to the beer post (duh), and drop the autosiphon in the keg that is filled with a hot PBW solution. Then I just pump the autosiphon 15-20 times pushing the PBW through the dip tube. I've yet to take a keg apart. Again, i may be playing with fire, but it seems to work for me.

 

Don't open a kicked keg until you're ready to clean it. Keeping it closed helps keep all that gunk wet and easier to rinse out.

Also, here's a quick way to do a once-over cleaning & sanitizing on your beer lines:

 

Don't dry hop in the keg if the hops aren't in some type of bag, I suggest panty hose. They will clog the dip tube.

 

Make sure you always test your recently filled keg for leaks....every time! I just spray the lid / poppets/posts with a spray bottle full of sanitizer and look/listen for bubbles. I also spray my hose connectors on both ends (co2 tank side and keg side). Keg lube is a good thing. Don't over fill your keg as it can be a recipe for sending liquid in reverse through your regulator. Go with ball lock kegs as the have a handy pressure release valve and are skinnier so you can fit more in a chest freezer or kegerator.

 

All good advice. On testing recently filled kegs, it doesn't hurt to test the poppets, but if you're hooking them up to disconnects right away, and they will stay connected for the life of the batch, then a leaky poppet doesn't matter. But it would need to be fixed/replaced if the keg would be used to hold beer without having a disconnect connected.