Hello all I brewed a RIS and am currently dry hopping for 1 week in the keg. Once done I plan on storing the keg until I tap it in November. For those that store/age beer in kegs, how often do you give it a shot of CO2? Do you just seal it and then fill it with CO2 and leave it alone or do you top it off with CO2 every once in a while? Thanks, Tim
I fully carbonate, then store. If you seal it and fill it, much of the CO2 in the headspace will migrate to the beer, and you could lose your seal.
I stored mine by just filling the headspace. My thought was that since the beer never gets cold, the CO2 never gets absorbed. Thus, the seal is never lost. When I checked that keg a month later, it still had plenty of pressure inside. Once I purged the headspace to check, I topped it off again with CO2. Back in the basement it went for another few months. It is a 12.4% RIS.
I usually hit kegs with ~20-25 psi and then they are good in the basement. My longest was probably about 1 year before I finally tapped it. If I put a keg in the keezer, I hook it up to gas so it doesn't loose a seal as it gets cold. Of course, all of this depends on not having a slow leak, but I am pretty anal at this point about checking when I keg the beer.
CO2 gets partially absorbed and reaches equilibrium (between beer and headspace) regardless of the temperature. The difference is that at higher temperatures, the same amount of CO2 is at a higher pressure.
Who told you that? Ideally, you want to hook it up to the gas at the proper pressure for the temperature and desired volume of CO2 (consult the charts). It doesn't matter if it's warm or cold -- just use the charts. If that's not practical, I'd advise to hit it with, maybe, 60psi, then let it sit at room temp until whenever. Two weeks before serving, put it in the kegerator, set it to serving pressure, and go watch TV or something.
I don't think I would store a RIS @ refer temps until Nov. Of course that advice is not for a RIS that has been dry hopped. I like to hook up a pressure gauge/vent valve to check what's up periodically and adjust as necessary.
Glad to see this thread! I just was contemplating this myself. Earlier this week I had to throw 9 gallons or so of IPA into kegs. I filled one up to the top and dryhopped it, threw it in the keg with serving pressure and into the kegerator until I return next weekend. However, the remaining 4ish gallons I didn't want to sit in the primary any longer (it already had been 5ish weeks) so we threw it in another keg, purged a few times to get most of the oxygen out and stuck it in the basement with some dry hoppage. The idea is to carbonate that one up and throw it into some bottles. Anyone every done this? Or kegged up a non 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon keg? I have a Yeti clone (big stout) in primary now, it would be neat to throw it into the keg for a secondary and tap in october.
