corney keging

[dazer23866]

just got myself two cornys all regs and a party tap, filled them with beer and forced carbed for a few days, i am very dissapointed, all i could get was a carbed young beer taste to say i am gutted is an understatement. i thought that the point was i could drink it quicker and it would taste better than bottle conditiond beer, please dont tell me that is how it is as im off back to bottling.
is there something i am missing here as i thought this was the better method of serving beer

[GrowlingDogBeer]

Your beer still needs time to condition, You can't just transfer it to the corny straight out of the fermenter and carbonate and drink, hence the reason for needing multiple cornies. I have 11 cornies 5 of which currently have beer in conditioning, and 4 are at drinking stage. The other 2 are ready to be filled with whats currently iin the fermenters when I get round to it.

Beer takes time to condition whether in bottles or kegs, I'm not sure there is any way to speed up that process.

However it is a lot easier filling a corny than it is 34 pint bottles.

[dazer23866]

so in short your saying if i wait say five weeks and carb, it will taste as good as a bottle at five weeks.

and yes i would rather wait than bottle but it does need to taste as good

[GrowlingDogBeer]

Yep, if you wait 5 weeks it will be as good as bottling.

[dazer23866]

Thank god dont mind the waiting but i hate bottiling.
Maybe someone should do a run down of how they keg and mature there beer

[Sandybee]

I too have just taken delivery of my first two cornies. I had in mind, after primary fermentation, to condition in a carboy for around 5 weeks. If I do this, can I transfer to the cornie after force carbonating the beer for a couple of days, and then just drink it?

Cheers.

[GrowlingDogBeer]

Yes, that will work fine, as long as you give the beer time to condition somewhere.

I assume you mean transfer to the corny and then force carbonate, rather than transfer to the corny after force carbonating. I have a feeling that force carbonationg in a carboy might result in a bit of a mess

[Sandybee]

Right! I really wasn't going to carbonate in the carboy.

[Belly]

Are you guys conditioning under gas? I've been sticking my ales / stouts into the keg and conditioning at around 5 psi (and downing the odd pint). Have I done wrong?

[Kev888]

You need to blast the corny with (say) 20psi to 30psi to make sure its properly sealed (they seal through internal pressure, forcing the lid shut) but after that you don't need to keep the pressure on whilst it conditions - its just like a big stainless bottle really.

There was a debate some time ago about carbonating at kegging vs before serving; a knowledgeable chap (who has since departed the forum..) had heard that CO2 can inhibit the yeast from cleaning up after itself, but in general it wasn't a conclusive thread. Personally i'd find it awkward to pressurise all the kegs i have conditioning/storing anyway though, so I just begin to force carbonate say a week before serving.

Dazer; just as Steve says - the beer usually needs to condition irrespective of what its in (though some people have found the odd recipe/process that tastes good very early). Cornies can save 'a bit' of time by not having to wait for the priming fermentation to end first, so they're faster than pressure barrels but i find about the same as bottling, because bottles (being much shorter) do clear down their sediment more quickly so make up the time needed for priming.

The good thing about cornies is that (assuming decent sanitation) the beer keeps almost as long as in bottles but without having to bottle (so unlike PBs you don't need to worry about oxidation trying to offset the benefits of conditioning). If you want a continual turnover you do need quite a lot of cornies to be able to keep beer in them for a long time though..

Cheers
Kev

[Sandybee]

I've just got my kegs, so I can't talk from experience.

I've bottled up to now and have conditioned in a carboy and in an "economy" plastic keg. To me, it makes some sense conditioning in a keg as the beer has a headstart in carbonisation. However, in practice, it didn't seem to make much difference. From what I've read, the beer should fall clear before transfer to a cornie. This would leave most of the yeast behind and, since your going to force carbonate, you don't really need any further fermentation to carbonate. As for drawing off a few pints while it's conditioning, I couldn't imagine anybody being able to resist this.

[Belly]

Thanks Kev888. Another side question....but related. How full do you fill your cornies? I'm filling to within a couple of inches of the top, when I charge the kegs I get a little brew through the relief valve and occassionally around the seals. Am I filling too full?

[dazer23866]

You need to blast the corny with (say) 20psi to 30psi to make sure its properly sealed (they seal through internal pressure, forcing the lid shut) but after that you don't need to keep the pressure on whilst it conditions - its just like a big stainless bottle really.

There was a debate some time ago about carbonating at kegging vs before serving; a knowledgeable chap (who has since departed the forum..) had heard that CO2 can inhibit the yeast from cleaning up after itself, but in general it wasn't a conclusive thread. Personally i'd find it awkward to pressurise all the kegs i have conditioning/storing anyway though, so I just begin to force carbonate say a week before serving.

Dazer; just as Steve says - the beer usually needs to condition irrespective of what its in (though some people have found the odd recipe/process that tastes good very early). Cornies can save 'a bit' of time by not having to wait for the priming fermentation to end first, so they're faster than pressure barrels but i find about the same as bottling, because bottles (being much shorter) do clear down their sediment more quickly so make up the time needed for priming.

The good thing about cornies is that (assuming decent sanitation) the beer keeps almost as long as in bottles but without having to bottle (so unlike PBs you don't need to worry about oxidation trying to offset the benefits of conditioning). If you want a continual turnover you do need quite a lot of cornies to be able to keep beer in them for a long time though..

Cheers
Kev

Thanks for that iam just so glad it will turn out ok, i was getting a little paranoid for a second as i looked at so many articals about carbing a keg, time after time i came up with these results, pressure to 45 psi for a few days, turn down to about 6 or 7 psi to serve, and thats what i did.
So now i have hit them with 15 psi and just left them i will then return in about 5 weeks to carb them at about 12 to 15 psi to serve does this sound ok

[Kev888]

Thanks Kev888. Another side question....but related. How full do you fill your cornies? I'm filling to within a couple of inches of the top, when I charge the kegs I get a little brew through the relief valve and occassionally around the seals. Am I filling too full?

You should ideally stop filling a few cm before the beer reaches the bottom of the short/gas dip tube; if you over-fill it then foam/beer can get up the gas line in some situations, and you don't want it in the regulator. Two inches sounds a bit too high to me, though cornies do differ that would cover the dip tube on most of mine, also unless the foam is starsan or something I'm guessing it may be because the gas dip tube is in the beer so its blowing bubbles. You do get gas escape before the lid gets set by the blast of pressure but the release valve shouldn't let any out at say 30-ish PSI as cornies are designed to take over 100PSI when new (unless its been converted to an S30 type release valve or something) so that may be worth looking at.

My process is to briefly squirt some CO2 into the keg (so that at least the bottom of it will contain heavier CO2 rather than air) and then fill either down the black disconnect or through a syphon tube run down to the bottom of the corny; the gas and lack of splashing stops the beer becoming oxygenated/oxidised. I stop short of the small dip tube, put the lid on and blast at a high pressure (say 30psi) to set the lid - you may need to wiggle the lid about a bit if it refuses to seal - and then make sure there are no leaks. I pull briefly on the pressure release valve to allow any air to escape and be replaced with CO2, then disconnect and put the corny somewhere to condition. There's abundant use of sanitising solution (in my case starsan) throughout too. These days I tend to stand it in a bucket overnight after first filling, just in case theres a slow leak from the product post that I've not noticed. After some weeks - about a week before I want to serve it - I'll re-connect the corny to the gas (at about 1bar/15psi) to carbonate it over several days.

time after time i came up with these results, pressure to 45 psi for a few days, turn down to about 6 or 7 psi to serve, and thats what i did. So now i have hit them with 15 psi and just left them i will then return in about 5 weeks to carb them at about 12 to 15 psi to serve does this sound ok

Yep, it depends on how carbonated you like your drink, but 45psi is really quite fizzy lager territory in my opinion, I never use pressures like that for ales (aside from briefly when setting the lid anyway). 15psi sounds much more like it (though cooler beer will carbonate more than warmer beer at the same pressure).

There's a whole art to carbonating and ballancing your line when serving and I'm not an expert at it, but until I got my keggorator and could keep the beer cool (to retain the CO2 better) I got the dreaded foam if I served at a pressure much less than the carbonating pressure, so 12psi sounds fine for that too; I also find it convenient to carbonate and serve at the same pressure, as I can just use a splitter on the gas line and do both with the same regulator then, so one can be serving whilst the next carbonates .

Ideally you want your beer/product line long enough so that it's restriction causes a gradual pressure drop between keg and tap when dispensing, rather than the pressurised/carbonated beer dropping to zero instantly (like opening a fizzy drink bottle suddenly). if you have a party tap or limited line length you may need to serve at a lower pressure (but take care as some of my cornies need at least several PSI to stay sealed).

Cheers
Kev

[Bribie]

A major difference between kegging and bottling is that with bottling you are relying on the gas produced by priming sugars to carbonate the beer from "within" , whereas with kegs that are being conditioned with top-pressure (as opposed to the guys who pop some priming sugars actually into the keg) you are carbonating from "without".

With bottled beers, then, you need to keep it at around, say, 18-20° so that the conditioning will work. However with kegs if you can keep them cold - very cold - you can condition and mature the beer far more quickly. CO2 will more easily permeate cold beer, and if you have a dedicated keg fridge where you can get down to nearly freezing, you can achieve in a week what could take three weeks in the bottle, not only from quicker carbonation but the "lagering" effect of a cold temperature that settles out crud and polishes the beer far quicker than at room temperature.