Beginner Kegging

[Paul Cannell]

Hi guys,

I have had a bit of a poke around on here looking for some advice and answers to my questions. Haven't had much luck so far. Maybe someone can help.

I am relatively new to brewing with about 6 months under my belt. I've had some success and some disaster, namely exploding herbal tea experiments, extremely fizzy beer and also the opposite extreme of flat beer. I have been experimenting with different extract kits as well as a few batches of wine.

I have a crude setup that I got off an older chap who hadn't used it for a while. Its sufficient, but I am growing a little tied of the bottling process, getting fed up with sediment and I'm keen to solve my carbonation issues.

Thus I am determined to switch to a kegging system, from what i have heard, this seems the likely way to solve all of my issues.

My local brew shop does not stock anything in regards to this and i am having trouble finding out what I need and how to get it.

I have been on trademe but as i don't really know what I am looking for, it's a little hard.

My aims are: 

- Have the ability to have 3 kegs on the go (most likely start with 1 due to financial constraints). 

- Adapt an older fridge (still to be acquired), to house these 3 kegs, with taps on the side or door.

- Possibly the ability to attempt brewing from scratch one day down the track

If anyone out there can help me out with the WHERE FROM and the HOW TO, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Crusader-Rob]

Corn Sugar is Dextrose. It's available from your local Brewshop, normally in 1kg lots. works for me, i use the john palmer method, 4oz of dextrose (approx 110 grams) in 2 cups of water, boil 10 mins coll and put into bottling bucket, then transfer beer into the bottling bucket and bottle as normal,  never had a bomb yet. this is for about 2.3-2.4 volumes of co2 which is standard for an ale style beer.

Its makes the beer in your bottles more consistantly carbed so they are all relatively the same, no bombs and not flatties.

 

when i did extract, i took his cinncinati pale ale recipe as m\y first recipe, turned out great! the smaller volumes will give you a better gravity. and it won't taste watery, i've over compensated a couple of times and ended up with watery beer.

The fridge thing is called crash cooling, I've started doing a ghetto version of that, freezing bottles and placing in my fermentation cupboard, this clears the beer nicely, should still be enough yeast for carbing up.

[Paul Cannell]

How long do you leave it to cool before bottling?

i will give this a go

[Crusader-Rob]

the priming sugar needs to be at room temperature, if its too hot it'll kill the yeast. i boil and put in the freezers for half an hour, normally thats enough. dump the sugar in the bottling bucket, and rack the beer on top, this ensures its all mixed evenly. you can pour the sugar directly to your fermenter and stir gently, but this risks the trub mixing in. which will give you more crap at the bottom of your bottles.

[Kelly Milligan]

Hey Rob, Not entirely true re: having to cool it.. When you consider 2cups of hot vs 20L of room temp beer, the temperature will equalize within seconds once you start transferring the beer into the bottling bucket. There will still be hundreds of billions of yeast cells still in solution in the beer so killing a few million in that first 1/2 litre of beer transferred shouldn't be a concern. If it saves you time and effort, just put the priming solution in hot ;)

[Crusader-Rob]

Fair Point. Never thought about it that way...

I'll continue to cool, I feel safer that way, but thanks. :)

[Ralph]

I always just throw mine in hot and it works fine...

[Gareth G]

are you using a hydrometer to check your FG is stable before bottling?

[Paul Cannell]

Yes, usually i'm pretty good with this but it may have been one of the reasons for some of my previous problems. Thanks

[Hamish Jones]

All I did for a CO2 bottle was an expired 3.5kg CO2 fire extinguisher and got Ctest to convert it cost $130 bucks to get the valve and the test done and it came back full, picked up the fire extinguisher for about $5 on trademe, cheaper than buying new and works just as well,

[Paul Cannell]

great thanks, i'll keep that in mind

[Paul Cannell]

Alright! I managed to get my hands on a free fridge and an old steel 3.5kg co2 extinguisher for 25bux (it's just at gaspro now getting the new valve).

I need some advice on a good place to purchase the rest of the bits and pieces I need like reg, taps and lines ect.

Also, if anyone knows a good place to find some instructions it would be great.

Cheers

[Hamish Jones]

There is someone on trademe selling 2 kegs, with reg, tap and fittings for a one tap setup, for about $450 the gas and beer line is cheap enough from the local brew shop, I got my extra taps, gas and liquid disconnects from ebay as they were loads cheaper even when freight was put on,

With my setup I used the main reg that came with the kit and set that to a constant pressure and fitted three inline smaller regs to the fridge that way you can adjust pressure per keg to get the right pressure for each keg, I got these regs on trademe from an old bar setup for about $15 each