Priming Sugar versus Force Carbing?

Yes you can do both, but one only will serve the purpose.

 

You can carbonate with sugar in a keg or In a bottle.
You can only force carbonate with c02 In a keg.
You can eventually bottle from a keg with either a counter pressure filler, beer gun, or other hacked together bottling device.

 

I suppose you could although I don't know if the pressure applied with the c02 would affect the yeasts ability to eat the sugar and create co2.

I can't imagine any reason why anyone would want to do both?

 

Yes. Priming sugar is a gradual pressurization. Some kegs need a blast of CO2 to seal them. You'll want to hit it with the gas line to make sure its sealed no matter what. This is more common if you don't have room to force carb in the keezer or kegerator and you'll be setting the keg off to the side. I guess sugar can be cheaper than using CO2 if you only have a 5# tank and a poor exchange rate on CO2 swaps.

Good luck.

 

I've never sugar primed a keg. Does co2 need to be applied to a primed keg for serving, otherwise the primed keg will eventually go flat after so many pours?

 

Yes. Well, it's not so much that it will go (completely) flat. But there soon won't be enough pressure to get a good pour, and at some point, not enough pressure for any pour.

 

Okay. That's what I was wondering. So people keg prime because they feel that the beers carbonation is better than force carbing? Or they like the purity of "natural carbonation"?

 

Some feel it's more authentic/more cask-like, but if you push sugar conditioned beer with a CO2 tank, the CAMRA crowd will disown you anyway. Some think the bubbles are different. Some think it's cheaper (it may be, I haven't done the math).

 

i've keg primed with sugar just to save fridge space. it also helps free up a carboy if you want to keep bulk aging a beer and let it carb while keeping the beer pipeline flowing.

 

???

 

There's no need to take up fridge space to force carb. I routinely force carb in a closet.

 

Good point...I guess I just assumed most people used the same CO2 regulation system to serve as well as force carb...

For example: I only have one regulation system and my gas splitter is fastened to the inside of my fridge. For me to disassemble that and/or disconnect the hose system from all other kegs being served, then reassemble elsewhere every time I wanted to force carb...just isn't practicle.

But if you had two different gas systems, it would make sense.

 

Two regulators is all that's needed. Lacking that, you could hit it with 50 psi for a couple of days to get it started, then taper off to about 28 psi (about 2.5 volumes CO2 at room temperature)

 

I only have one regulator setup and a manifold similar to yours. I actually have an extra tank and regulator so i could force carb outside of the fridge but it's easier for me to dose a keg with sugar than to hook all that stuff up i guess. i might be lazy.

Another arguement for keg conditioning though (this is not why i do it, just an idea) is that you get added protection from oxygen. you have the ability to purge o2 from the keg and you also have the yeast scavenging what's left.

 

Pull the connector from an active keg, connect it to the fresh keg, pressurize it, then put it back. You've got to do this to purge the headspace anyway, so it's no extra work. I'm not saying priming with sugar is a bad thing. But it seems that some people believe force carbing takes special equipment or that it must be done in the fridge.

 

I understand what you're saying and i know there is no extra equipment requried I was just explaining why i've done my method in the past. truthfully though, my issue is that I wouldn't know what the proper pressure is to put the keg at since it'll be at room and won't have constant gas pressure on it. I know there are charts you can use if you keep constant gas pressure but i've never seen one if you're just pressurizing and disconnecting.