Happy Friday, beer fans! We have reached the conclusion of the Homebrewing series!
In previous episodes, we've had Ingredients, Mashing, Boiling the Wort, Fermentation, and Bottling.
Below the squiggle is Kegging, by Grainpaw.
At some point in your homebrewing career, you will get tired of bottling, or it
will otherwise become increasingly impractical. The most common and preferred solution is
to put the beer in a five-gallon soda keg, also known as Cornelius (a manufacturer) kegs
or cornies. There are a few other systems, such as five-liter cans using little CO2
cartridge injectors or two-gallon plastic kegs using proprietary chemical bags that
expand to maintain pressure as the beer is poured. These are easy to fit in a regular
fridge and cheaper to start with, and may meet the needs of some people, but serious
homebrewers use cornies. You can sanitize and fill a cornie in half an hour, versus two
or more hours to bottle five gallons. If you have a beer in a carboy ready to keg, and
unexpected company shows up, you can keg, dance the keg on your knee for a few minutes
under pressure, and be serving before the guy who made the beer run gets back.
A basic setup would be a 5, 10 or 20 pound CO2 cylinder (which need to be
pressure-tested every 5 years for $20, refills for a 20 are about $20, or the gas
distributor may have some kind of deposit or exchange arrangement which sidesteps the
pressure-testing), a two gauge regulator, a gas hose, a gas connector, the cornie, a
liquid connector, liquid hose, a plastic dispensing tap, and hose clamps on each end of
each hose. Cornies come in 2.5, 3, 5, and 10 gallon sizes, but the most common size is 5,
which currently are $25-50 used. Google for homebrew kegging system to find a plethora of
pictures.
Depending on source prices, this may cost about $175-200 total, less if you can
scrounge anything. A new dorm fridge would be $100 or so, but you can use the system
without refrigeration in a cold basement, for example. Do not try to use it outside if
the temperature could drop below freezing, unless you remember to disconnect the
connectors at bedtime, which you probably won't. Once I left a keg of Doppelbock out in
October, and in the morning all I had was brown icicles hanging off the deck. Even though
you wouldn't expect a keg of Doppelbock to freeze at 30 or so, the tap froze open just
enough to let 4 1/2 gallons dribble out, then all the CO2 in the tank escaped. That's the
last time I did that.
Bag-in-box systems are replacing cornies in commercial use. Eventually the supply of
used ones will dry up, and new ones will be about $100 or more. Cornies come in two
types, Ball Lock (Pepsi), and Pin Lock (Coke). This refers to the type of connecting
stems on top. Ball Lock connectors have a ring that you pull up to slip it over the stem,
then the ring springs back to lock on. Pin Lock connectors have slots on a ring that
locks onto the pins at the base of the stem. There are three pins on the liquid
connector, two on the gas. When you get a used cornie that hasn't been reconditioned, get
a replacement set of o-rings (one for the lid, two for the stems, two for the dip tubes
under the stems, about $4.00), for spares if you don't use them right away. Also get a
spare plastic washer for the regulator, as they are easy to lose. Some people claim to
detect soda smells and tastes coming from old o-rings in the beer. I have never noticed
that problem, but I don't have a BJCP Judge-grade palate, either. Or the o-rings could be
old and stiff, or chewed up, and not seal well. In a marginal case, a dab of food-grade
grease (Keg Lube or Petrol-Gel) will seal a minor leak, and also help connectors go on
and come off easier. Use a crescent wrench or the right size wrench or socket to unscrew
the stems to access the dip tubes for o-ring replacement or dip tube cleaning
occasionally ( you will want a 1/4" brush about 2 to 3 feet long.
To clean a keg that is in regular use (one that isn't should be cleaned with a
carboy brush and your usual powdered cleaner before storage), I take it to the sink, let
the gas pressure off, open the lid, dump the sludge (even a beer that was clear when
kegged will leave some, and definitely more if it was primed), hose it out about 3 times,
add a dose of StarSan or BTF Iodophor sanitizer and a half gallon of hot water, shake it
up, attach a dispensing line with the little plastic faucet (AKA picnic tap) and give it
a shot of gas from my cleaning/filling CO2 tank (not the one that is always attached to
the beer fridge), run some santizer through the tap to be sure that the dip tube has
sanitizer in it, and let the cornie sit while I set up to siphon the beer into it from
the carboy. Then I run the rest of the sanitizer into the right-hand sink, where the
siphon hose is soaking also. I let the pressure off the cornie and run a dose of rinse
water through it under pressure if I used Iodophor. Star San is no-rinse and saves time.
I have read that any residue becomes a yeast nutrient once the beer hits it and the pH
changes. Then I siphon into the cornie, watching that it doesn't overflow (as could
happen if I am filling carefully from a primary which has finished fermentation but never
got racked to a carboy. There is an increased risk of trub or hop chunks clogging the poppet valve in the stem, which can be a
nuisance to clean out, and I may end up racking to another cornie), and leave an inch or
two of airspace. Then I reattach the lid with its swinging clamp, and flush the airspace
about five times with CO2 from the tank to get any remaining oxygen out. Then leave some
pressure on it as the lid sometimes needs some pressure on it to maintain an airtight
seal. This is important if you are going to store the cornie instead of putting it at
serving temperature and pressure right away (if you can brew that far ahead of need).
For carbonation, you can prime at about half the rate for bottles and store at room
temperature for 7-10 days before serving, or you can put it in the beer fridge at serving
temp and pressure and wait 7-10 days for the carbonation to get just right (but you can
at least get some sneak previews), or you can jiggle the keg for a few minutes at higher
than serving pressure, and this will get you some temporary carbonation to serve with,
and it will gradually stabilize to normal if you have it at serving temp and pressure.
The temperature will be what is appropriate for the style or as close as your equipment
can manage. There are charts and formulas to balance pressure, temperature, tubing size,
length, resistance, and height from mid-cornie to the faucet. Short of that, put the
cornie in the fridge at 12 psi, wait 7-10 days, and start serving, and adjust the screw
on the regulator about 1/8 turn a day until you are satisfied with the results. You can
branch off the gas line with stainless steel tees (about $2.75), which are cheaper than
brass manifolds and can be easily reconfigured according to need. You could have
conditioned beer in the fridge and more kegs outside being brought partially up to the
right carbonation, or even being served if the room is at ale temperaure, or you could be
serving your house wine or cider without necessarily carbonating it much. Just
occassionally give it a shot of gas to keep it pouring. Currently I have 3 cornies in an
old fridge at 39 degrees and 13 psi with 5 feet of 3/16" i.d. tubing for each
faucet. One faucet with my most recent brew, and one usually has a wine cooler in it,
Winexpert Island Mist Green Apple Riesling, for example. The wine is better sparkling,
and it became a nuisance to do 30 bottles of something we are just going to sip on at
home mostly. They are six gallon kits, so this leaves one gallon to bottle or throw in
the cornie when there is room. The Germans do a sparkling Riesling called Sekt. I have
wanted to keg a good Riesling kit ever since I heard of this, since most of my Champagne
bottles are full at the moment. The third keg will have a second brew, or sometimes a
homemade ginger ale. Kegging is the most convenient way to do sodas. Just boil
ingredients, cool, strain into cornie, chill and carbonate in fridge, and you're all set
for a month or two. If you bottle soda, you have to keep checking the carbonation process
carefully, then refrigerate every bottle to stop the yeast, otherwise the fermentation
continues with what was supposed to be the sweetening sugar, and you have bottle bombs.
I had 5 cornies on tap in my former basement without any refrigeration. That worked
fine except in the summer, but I also had plenty of bottles to refrigerate then. On
occasions when I would go to a cookout, for example, I would load the cornies and a 20
lb. CO2 tank into a foamboard and light plywood box in a garden cart, then throw a bag or
two of ice in, and wheel it into my van, and wheel it out on arrival. I called that my
six-pack. Most people will use an old fridge, or a chest freezer with a temperature
controller that overrides the unit's thermostat. A 20 lb CO2 tank occupies about the
same space as a cornie, so either use a 5 lb tank or carefully drill a hole avoiding
refrigerant lines to use a tank outside the unit. It does get to be a nuisance to have to
open the door every time you want a drink, so eventually you may want to buy a shank (to
go through the fridge door) and a proper beer faucet About $50-75 per set) for each
cornie. Or put a tap tower on the lid. If you are really into stout, you could add a
stout faucet and nitrogen tank and nitrogen regulator. But stout serves well on a normal
system, just without the cascading foam effect. Or just hang your hoses out a hole.
Sometimes people with chest freezers will remove the lid, attach a 2x4 collar to the top
edge of the freezer, and reattach the lid to the collar. All the holes needed can then be
made through the collar, and it can all be undone and restored to use as a freezer if
desired. I saw a customer-submitted picture in a catalog once of a chest freezer that
could serve seventeen beers. I wish I could get half that far ahead.
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But you don't necessarily need all that stuff. There is a simple way to use just a
cornie and two picnic taps as a poor man's cask system for English ales or whatever. Brew
the beer with a flocculant yeast, prime, add isinglass finings, and keg in a ball lock
cornie (the stems are opposite each other at the edge of the top). Store the keg on its
side at carbonating temperature. A couple days before tapping put it in place where you
will be serving, at counter or table height would be good, and preferably where it will
be around 50-55 degrees or you can use something like ice packs. Place it on its side
with the bottom tilted up about 8 inches, with the gas-in stem down in the front, and the
liquid out line on the top of the front. By now you will have cobbled up the gas and
liquid connectors with picnic taps and hoses just 2 or 3 inches long. Always use hose
clamps. Attach the connectors to the cornie. Now you are set to pour beer from the gas in
stem and, when the flow slows down, let air in with the other, which goes up the long
liquid dip tube to the air space in what is now the top end of the cornie. I remember
drinking on a keg set up like this for over a month after a December brew club meeting,
but it was in a cold basement. I actually had a small table frame made of 4x4 lumber, and
for the top I made a tilted rack to hold two cornies like this. A simple improvement over
letting air into the keg would be to replace the air-in tap with one of the little CO2
cartridge injectors, to keep a CO2 space in your cornie instead of an oxidizing air
space. Otherwise, the keg should be consumed within a few days.
Those little injectors (about $20 with one cartridge, $1.60 for extra cartridges)
are used when you want to take a cornie somewhere without the hassle of dragging along
your CO2 tank. About 3 cartridges will push the beer out of a pre-carbonated cornie, but
don't think of trying to carbonate a beer with this set-up. My latest thinking on cornies
to go is to pre-chill and carbonate the kegs in my beer fridge, then use the neoprene keg
parkas that come with their own gel ice pak sheets that fit in a pocket inside the parka.
I use SS Perlick faucets on 90-degree SS liquid connectors (my wife thought the
gold-plated faucets would be too ostentatious). Instead of lugging along a 20 pound CO2
tank as we used to, I got a 5 pounder, with a shorter, more flexible hose than before. It
should push 9 or 10 cornies, and is reserved for that purpose. There are adaptors for
using paintball CO2 cans if you want to go that small, and mini-regulators that cost
almost twice as much as a regular one. This results in a good-looking, more portable
system that doesn't rely on tubs of ice, and can be unloaded in pieces and hooked up on
site by one person, and serves enough inspiration for a weekend conference. If
portability on site is an issue, there is a $70 welding cart that would hold two cornies
and the gas nicely. If I were to go back to the six-pack concept now, I'd get one of the
new reasonably cheap and lightweight chest freezers that would hold six cornies and a 5
pound CO2 tank, or maybe one that would hold four regular cornies and two 3 gallon ones
on the compressor shelf. The pin locks are a couple inches shorter and an inch fatter
than the ball locks, so you should measure and plan carefully before you buy something.
Then I'd need a couple good stout wheels and handles on something like an angle iron
frame, and a solar panel and so on to help keep it cool off-grid, and I'd need a good
ramp to get it into my truck, and maybe some help, because I'm older and more decrepit
than I was in those days, so maybe just permanently mount it on a snazzy aluminum
art-deco teardrop-shaped trailer like one of the old Airstream campers, but smaller, that
I could tow behind my turtle-looking 2000 Honda Insight hybrid, but I don't know that
many people that I would want to go somewhere and drink with anyway, and at home I'd have
to go outside every time I wanted a beer. I'd better keep thinking about that before I do
something.
Cornies can also be use to safely haul home the wort you brewed with a friend, or as
a solid cylinder shape to wind the copper coil of your wort chiller around. Some people
will fit pressure gauges to use them as secondary fermenters while using the last CO2
generated to also carbonate the beer. Then they might push the beer with CO2 through a
pressure filter and into another cornie flushed with CO2. This way they get beer ready
to serve after aging that hasn't seen any oxygen since it was in the primary.
Overall, I'm happier kegging than bottling, though it means less variety available
at any one time. It is a hassle hauling cases of bottles into the crawlspace, and the
cardboard gets moldy and falls apart in 2 or 3 years. With kegging, if I want to take
some somewhere, I can fill a flip-top bottle or two or a growler from the tap, or I can
put a couple of kegs into their parkas if I need that much. No more sore legs from
spending hours scraping labels and sanitizing a pile of bottles, and then getting dirty
bottles back or none at all. Kegging is the best a homebrewer can do until we have a
multi-function genetically-modified cow. Grain mill in the front, four stomachs for hot
liquor, mash tun, boiling and fermenting, hops through a hatch in the side, a four-faucet
dispenser, and fertilizer applicator, with genuine leather upholstery. I can't think how
we would achieve simultaneous mash, boil, and refrigeration temperatures (something involving methane, no doubt), but I'm not the scientist. I just use the technology.