Transporting Homebrew

Sorry ahead of time for the long post.

I am new to kegging and just bought some ball lock reconditioned kegs. I moved away from home and started brewing about a year ago. I have been taking a large sum of bottle back to share with friends and family but with kegging I am anticipating problems. My dad and I built a keezer back home and have it all set up and ready to go for a beer that I plan to keg and take back in a couple of days. My problem is that I don’t have an extra co2 to pressurize the keg before I go so I was going to just transport it in the fermenter. I am worried that the drive will oxidize the beer and ruin it. I was thinking that since I didn’t transfer to a secondary during fermentation that it’s mostly co2 in the fermenter and it might not oxidize for that reason. Can anyone offer advice or inform me on why this will or won’t work.

Thanks.

I’ve moved beer in a carboy due to buying a house, but it was two weeks into fermentation. Aside from oxidation, stirring up the trub would be another issue.
Is this something you plan on doing often? If so it might be wise to check into a way to charge a keg prior to transfer.
Haven’t used them, but there’s setups that use paintball canisters for serving. That should be sufficient to add a blanket of co2 to a keg. Here’s something NB offers.

You would also need one of these.

Honestly I didn’t even think about stirring up the trub but that is a really good point. This should be the only time I will need to do this, I plan to get a co2 tank by the end of the week. I will probably just let it settle for a day and then siphon it over to the keg.

just keg it and seal it with co2 with a cartridge like mentioned above or " bottle condition the keg" you can either add sugar or just transfer before fermentation is complete. Since you can’t seal the keg after priming it bleed it after the first day to get the o2 out which should be on the top.

I always forget about priming the keg as an option. :beers:

If I were to bottle condition the keg, how long would it take to carb up? Also how long should i wait to throw some co2 on it?

Two weeks. Treat it just like a bottle but only use about 50% of the sugar. That’s how I’ve done it. @sneezles61 racks it before it’s done fermenting and let’s if finish in the keg. Hopefully he will chime in.

If you do have yer brew at about 1.020, fer most brews, put it in the keg. Now I do have co2 so I will use it to seal up yer keg and no more. Then let it be, and ifn you got it so it won’t leak, I like to lay it on its side and roll it as often as you walk by to keep the yeast into solution. I will put the picnic tap on from time to time to pull a small sample. I’ve had some awesome cask conditioned in as little as 2 weeks… But if you can wait for the “green-ness” to pass, a month, sometimes longer, you will be rewarded with a wonderful pint! Don’t refrigerate it,cellared, 50-60*. Be patient and don’t expect crystal clear brews, this is a living brew! Sneezles61