About to start kegging

Kegging
1

My amazing girlfriend got me a kegerator for christmas! I am now ready to delve into kegging. I have a couple of questions. When you keg must you immediately carbonate the beer? Could you fill a keg and let it sit at room temperature until its ready to be carbonated? Should it be refridgerated? I am thinking about getting a couple of the used kegs. I think I also need a different coupler?

Fred

2

We have three kegs and are too impatient to do this but I think a lot of people just use a keg as a secondary instead of a five gallon carboy so I’m sure you can leave them sit for a while.

Congratulations on the kegerator! Once you see how much less time and effort it takes to fill a keg than bottling 50 12ouncers you will see that this is the best thing that will happen to you brewing.

3

Yes you can store your uncarbonated beer in kegs at room temp until you have room in the fridge. I think what you would want to do is hit the filled keg with some CO2 to pressurize it while it’s being stored. And yes you will need to replace the sanke coupler with some cornie style disconnects like the ones here…

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew ... s-fittings
4

Is it a single tap kegorator? If so what you can do is get a Y splitter to connect to your CO2 tank. Run one line to your active keg and another to a back up keg. You should be able to fit at least 2 cornies in a kegorator. That way while drinking your first keg, the second will be carbing. When the first keg kicks just switch the beer out connection from keg 1 to 2 and your ready to drink. Then sanitize and fill the first keg and hook that up to the gas. You’ll always have a keg cold, carbed and ready to go.

I just converted a single tap kegorater to a double tap. So I have 2 kegs going at all times and a third that won’t fit in the fridge. So after I fill the 3rd keg, I hook it up to the gas to push the oxygen out of the head space and then put the lid on. When a keg kicks I just replace it with the one that’s been sitting under pressure conditioning. I have to wait 5-7 days for it to carb, but it still works out well.

5

Cold storage can sometimes be limited. Its nice to have a second tank just for carbing. I try to keep 8-10 kegs filled and I don’t have that kind of room in the kegerator, so I carb @ 68F. Easy to store and ready to go when needed.