Corny question

[Steve62]

I now have 4 corny kegs and find them fantastic but need a little help

Do I store the beer in the cornies and connect the gas when the beer has matured or is it best to connect the gas as soon as the beer is in it?

if it helps I prefer bitter/real ales type of brews

Cheers
Steve

 

[Fore]

One thing you must certainly do is to purge the head space of air once you have sealed up. And given that you then have the new beer in, and the gas line attached, no harm in just finishing the job. Many suggestions on carbing up are at the extreme ends, very slow (serving pressure), or super fast. I go for a fair balance, raising to about 3 Bar for 2-3 days then reducing to serving pressure. Once it's stable at serving pressure, I move the gas line back to the drinking keg.

 

[peebee]

One thing you must certainly do is to purge the head space of air once you have sealed up. And given that you then have the new beer in, and the gas line attached, no harm in just finishing the job. Many suggestions on carbing up are at the extreme ends, very slow (serving pressure), or super fast. I go for a fair balance, raising to about 3 Bar for 2-3 days then reducing to serving pressure. Once it's stable at serving pressure, I move the gas line back to the drinking keg.

Yeap, connect the CO2 to purge the airspace of air. The CO2 can be disconnected until serving then (but a few PSI, 4-5, will keep the lid sealed which are notorious for the seal breaking at low pressure - it can be an idea to check the pressure after a few hours and top it up as the CO2 will dissolve into the beer).

3 Bar? :shock: The OP has specified a preference for "Real Ale" style. I use 50-150 milli Bar, or 1/20th of that pressure (LPG regulator). Although that's serving pressure, letting the pressure grow to greater than 5PSI does create problems. And being "Real Ale" in style means force carbonating is out. Natural carbonation from 10-15g of priming sugar added to the keg is quite enough.

 

[Fil]

+1, purging out O2 asap is your #1 priority, However with corny kegs i would suggest its probably best to condition asap, corny lid seals, especially those in older kegs can require a small level of pressure to make the seal. If you dont condition the beer the pressure used to make the seal on the keg can easily drop as the co2 is absorbed by the beer, and in some cases this can result in the loss of the lid seal, If kegs without an effective lid seal are lumped about they can be at risk of O2 ingress into the keg, a rare and low risk but a real one none the less..

If the added PH due to co2 levels in conditioned beers has any impact on maturity and how long it takes I dont know, but keeping your beer under pressure is a very effective defence against ingress of anything unwanted ( o2, microlife etc..)

 

[BarnBrian]

One thing you must certainly do is to purge the head space of air once you have sealed up. And given that you then have the new beer in, and the gas line attached, no harm in just finishing the job. Many suggestions on carbing up are at the extreme ends, very slow (serving pressure), or super fast. I go for a fair balance, raising to about 3 Bar for 2-3 days then reducing to serving pressure. Once it's stable at serving pressure, I move the gas line back to the drinking keg.

Even if you're talking 3bar absolute that's still way too much. You might need 2bar to get the lid sealed properly and then drop it back to less than 1 bar to carbonate.

 

[Steve62]

Thanks for the help and advice, I had all 4 connected permanently so no wonder my gas bottle only lasted 8 weeks, in future I'll purge the air out then only connect the one that's ready for drinking

 

[Soton]

Thanks for the help and advice, I had all 4 connected permanently so no wonder my gas bottle only lasted 8 weeks, in future I'll purge the air out then only connect the one that's ready for drinking

It sounds like you might a a leak in your CO2, I normally have 3-4 kegs hooked up, I keep mine connected all the time and a bottle of CO2 last almost a year
I suggest you connect up your kegs then spay all joints, lids and connections, everything that could leak with starsan and check for bubbling,
The quick connects have a large screw on top of them and they sometimes need tightening to get them sealed

 

[Fore]

The 3 bar seems to have raised eyebrows. There is such little space above the beer that you can't squeeze much CO2 in there. If I charge that small head space to 3 bar then turn off the gas, the head pressure starts to drop very quickly as the CO2 absorbs into the much larger volume of beer. Pressure x volume stays the same value, and I would guess my head space is roughly one 6th of the total volume of my keg. So if my starting pressure in the head space is 3 bar, and I turn off the gas, the final head pressure (serving pressure), once absorbed, would be 0.5 bar. If my head space is actually one 7th of the total volume, then I'd finish with 0.43 bar. I'm not an expert on these things, but that's how I understand it. The point of the higher start pressure is just to speed things up a bit while retaining a lot more control than the roll on knee 5 minute method. The higher start is more interesting in warmer weather when it seems to take an age for CO2 to be absorbed.

To give you an idea of tank life, my 5kg CO2 tank just finished today. It managed 15 kegs. Longest one lasted 16 kegs. That includes 3 step cleaning (clean+rinse+sanitise), purging, carbing, and serving. It doesn't seem a lot to me, but I don't believe I have any leaks. Considering a 10kg tank next.

 

[Steve62]

It sounds like you might a a leak in your CO2, I normally have 3-4 kegs hooked up, I keep mine connected all the time and a bottle of CO2 last almost a year
I suggest you connect up your kegs then spay all joints, lids and connections, everything that could leak with starsan and check for bubbling,
The quick connects have a large screw on top of them and they sometimes need tightening to get them sealed

I did check all connections when I set them up, but I will re-check them again

 

[Fil]

with 2-4 (generally 2 ) kegs online i expect 12-18 months of use from a 6.5kg bottle of co2, the kegs are generally left with gas turned on maintaining a serving pressure between 4-6psi, my conditioning is very ad hoc and depends on the time of year, (no keg fridge) but i will generally vent out o2 before setting pressure @ 20-30 psi and leaving the kegs on gas at that pressure for a day or 2, upto a week in the warmest months, before disconnecting and letting stand off gas, monitoring with a pressure gauge attached to a disconnect especially if an unexpected or extra sharp frost has hit.

I have dropped a couple of bottles due to leaks and dumb ass moves tho..

one thing that can catch you is exchanging a bottle for one with a damaged valve face, these are generally capped when exchanged but do pull and inspect before accepting the bottle, a banged up valve face can chew up the sealing washer when attached to your reg, and will probably hold for that bottle But next time round if gone unnoticed the damaged washer can lead to loosing a bottle overnight or within a few weeks. Also when attaching the regulator a good wrap of ptfe round the bottle thread wont hurt.

starsan applied via a trigger bottle makes a good leak detector spray too.

if using jg fittings ensure none are under any sideways or shearing pressure, and if they are consider adding an elbow fitting or mod your pipework to avoid it, and give every fitting an extra shove to ensure the tube is well home inside the fittings.

 

[Fore]

It was quite a while, and probably quite some leakage, before I first inspected my tank connection and became familiar with Dowty seals. The actual seal that I'd been using for a year or so, was so shot, I'm amazed it held back anything. Great things those Dowty seals; really good idea to bond the rubber with the metal. It means you can tighten the connection pretty much as hard as you like without fear of distorting or stripping the washer. Still, at first I bought the absolute cheapest on the bay and was stung because the rubber is cr*p! You can see air bubbles in it; it looks like a home made job. So I tried the very slightly more expensive ones, sold as German, still very cheap but worlds apart. Fine job.

 

[Steve62]

It was quite a while, and probably quite some leakage, before I first inspected my tank connection and became familiar with Dowty seals. The actual seal that I'd been using for a year or so, was so shot, I'm amazed it held back anything. Great things those Dowty seals; really good idea to bond the rubber with the metal. It means you can tighten the connection pretty much as hard as you like without fear of distorting or stripping the washer. Still, at first I bought the absolute cheapest on the bay and was stung because the rubber is cr*p! You can see air bubbles in it; it looks like a home made job. So I tried the very slightly more expensive ones, sold as German, still very cheap but worlds apart. Fine job.

I just looked at them, what size did you order? I know what size spanner fits the nut but don't have calipers to size the thread

 

[Fore]

M12 fits mine. But I don't have a thread, just a plain shaft. I guess your set up could be different, so worthwhile I illustrate with some pictures.

You see the shaft where I push the washer, the CO2 tank face where it will eventually seal when I screw it on, and the washer in place. That black plastic knobly thing is just moulded to the silver nut, so I can easily tighten to the tank by hand.