You can carbonnate with beer gas if you like. I just find it a little less efficient and a bit wastefull. Otherwise works fine.
Stone left in should be fine. I have 2 keg lids with stones just so I can leave them in and carb with the other.
I do find working with beer gas a little trickier. You are working at higher preasures but need to keep the beer at low carbonation levels.
Make sure you purge the keg well before serving your first pint. I have read that others keep the high preasure on all the time with no problems. This has not been my experience so far. If the beer is slightly under carbed the high preasure works well to get it up. When it is pouring perfect pints I try my best to keep it that way. Might pull down the preasure just a tad (15-20psi). I always turn it off after last pour of the night. If I am at my perfect carb level, I might vent just a tad of that gas. If I am fairly flat I might actually leave gas on over night and purge next day.
Later in the keg if I am a little overcarbed I might serve on its own preasure to flatten it a little etc.
Basically it does take a little more getting used to than straight CO2 dispensing. Just considder it an advanced course in draft beer.
[quote]Set to 30psi and forget about it till keg is empty. If you’re not carbing with co2, no need to purge keg before first pint.
I manage bars and use 75/25 mix at home usually 3-4 times a year.[/quote]
This is home brew, correct?
How long until you start pouring? Days? weeks?
How long does a keg last you?
I like ALL of the info I’ve heard. THANKS!
Still trying to figure out a reason not to just hook it up with the BG and let it do what it’s going to do. 8)
The stone will be releasing CO2 in a smaller volume “trickled” through the beer from the bottom up so that it does have direct contact and should help with the lower/desired carbonation levels. Aside from being a little wasteful of the BG, I can’t come up with another reason to go to the trouble to mess up the rest of my system.
Once the keg reaches equilibrium with a solid blanket of nitrogen on top of the beer, it shouldn’t over carbonate the beer. Correct?
I’ll hook it up tomorrow and report back with the results in a few days or so.
Though because the Nitrogen is in gas form and not liquid like CO2 there is much less beer gas in a tank. You will be filling up your tank much more than your CO2 tank.
Since you seem completely fine with this, there is no issue.
[quote=“Duder”]All hooked up and so far so good. Getting the stone/tube hooked to the bottom of the gas post was probably the worst part of the whole deal.
Taste is fantastic! Much different than the same Oatmeal Stout I have put on CO2 in the past.
It is a bit “undercarbed” probably due to my desire to use BG mix instead of CO2 to a lower volume for initial carbonation. It’s only been hooked up for 1 week. 15psi for an hour and then up to 35 psi since then. BG left on and I’ve been pouring a small glas once a day to see what’s happening.