Idiot corny keg conditioning / filling

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jambop

Regular.
Joined
Nov 21, 2023
Messages
294
Reaction score
156
Location
France
OK so I recently bought a couple of small corny kegs to replace my tin can jobs. It is getting near time to start packaging my first batch using said. I want use sugar in the keg conditioning and my plan is to prime the keg at 4g of sugar per litre and then fill the keg through the beer out under gravity from my fermenter and just vent of the air in the keg through a fully open blowtie spunding valve. When the keg is full close the spunding valve and let the pressure in the keg rise to 15psi before setting the pressure valve to 10psi ... does this sound all right? I was not going to flush with CO2 as the beer is an English best bitter and the actual oxygen contact should be minimal since there will be very little splashing in the keg as it rises and pushes the air out... does oxygen contact really make a huge difference? I have been making beer for ages and never really gave it a thought until reading about it on the internet recently. My thoughts were does it make the beer taste better ? Hmm surely that is subjective? Because someone likes their beer to taste as they like it not because another group say they think it tastes better... I don't know as I have never done a side by side to find out 😁

Will I need to pressurise the keg to seal the lid? If so what pressure should I use?
 
Process sounds good and similar to how I used to fill my kegs, but as said you should pressurise the keg after filling to ensure a good seal.

Don’t worry about the oxygen contact I’ve never seen it as a problem. Although in saying that, these days I store my kegs cleaned and co2 purged so I just open the safety release valve when ready to fill and and gravity pour beer in to the out post with a hose from the gas in looping in to the fermenter bung. Sort of closed transfer. Works great, and I can easily see when the keg if full as the beer appears in the gas line so I know to start on the next keg.
 
OK so I recently bought a couple of small corny kegs to replace my tin can jobs. It is getting near time to start packaging my first batch using said. I want use sugar in the keg conditioning and my plan is to prime the keg at 4g of sugar per litre and then fill the keg through the beer out under gravity from my fermenter and just vent of the air in the keg through a fully open blowtie spunding valve. When the keg is full close the spunding valve and let the pressure in the keg rise to 15psi before setting the pressure valve to 10psi ... does this sound all right? I was not going to flush with CO2 as the beer is an English best bitter and the actual oxygen contact should be minimal since there will be very little splashing in the keg as it rises and pushes the air out... does oxygen contact really make a huge difference? I have been making beer for ages and never really gave it a thought until reading about it on the internet recently. My thoughts were does it make the beer taste better ? Hmm surely that is subjective? Because someone likes their beer to taste as they like it not because another group say they think it tastes better... I don't know as I have never done a side by side to find out 😁

Will I need to pressurise the keg to seal the lid? If so what pressure should I use?
Do you mean physically full, or full allowing for headspace?
4g per litre sounds like a lot of priming sugar. The rule of thumb for priming kegs is half of what you would use for bottling. It is also temperature-dependent for the amount of priming sugar used..
Keg beer isn't as flavourful for me. I like my beers almost flat, like a cask beer or a low-carbonated bottled beer.
 
Do you mean physically full, or full allowing for headspace?
4g per litre sounds like a lot of priming sugar. The rule of thumb for priming kegs is half of what you would use for bottling. It is also temperature-dependent for the amount of priming sugar used..
Keg beer isn't as flavourful for me. I like my beers almost flat, like a cask beer or a low-carbonated bottled beer.
Yes you could be right about the sugar I use 2.5g/L in my mini kegs but I find the beer very lightly carbonated. I may just go with 3g / L see what happens. To measure when full I will use a scale to end filling. The kegs are 9.5L max fill so stopping at just over 9L should do the trick.
 
Last edited:
Process sounds good and similar to how I used to fill my kegs, but as said you should pressurise the keg after filling to ensure a good seal.

Don’t worry about the oxygen contact I’ve never seen it as a problem. Although in saying that, these days I store my kegs cleaned and co2 purged so I just open the safety release valve when ready to fill and and gravity pour beer in to the out post with a hose from the gas in looping in to the fermenter bung. Sort of closed transfer. Works great, and I can easily see when the keg if full as the beer appears in the gas line so I know to start on the next keg.
Is filling to when the beer is seen in the gas line not overfull? I thought I would need to leave a little head space?
 
IMG_6427.jpeg

Keg number 2 being filled.
 
OK so I recently bought a couple of small corny kegs to replace my tin can jobs. It is getting near time to start packaging my first batch using said. I want use sugar in the keg conditioning and my plan is to prime the keg at 4g of sugar per litre and then fill the keg through the beer out under gravity from my fermenter and just vent of the air in the keg through a fully open blowtie spunding valve. When the keg is full close the spunding valve and let the pressure in the keg rise to 15psi before setting the pressure valve to 10psi ... does this sound all right? I was not going to flush with CO2 as the beer is an English best bitter and the actual oxygen contact should be minimal since there will be very little splashing in the keg as it rises and pushes the air out... does oxygen contact really make a huge difference? I have been making beer for ages and never really gave it a thought until reading about it on the internet recently. My thoughts were does it make the beer taste better ? Hmm surely that is subjective? Because someone likes their beer to taste as they like it not because another group say they think it tastes better... I don't know as I have never done a side by side to find out 😁

Will I need to pressurise the keg to seal the lid? If so what pressure should I use?
Keg filling process looks fine.

Why are you priming the keg if it's going under co2 pressure? If I were keg conditioning I'd prime and leave the keg at atmospheric pressure immediately after filling before closing up to let pressure build naturally from the secondary fermentation.

O2 ingress is something you should be concerned about. More critical with some beer styles vs. others, but all beer is ruined by oxygen eventually and though we're used to measuring things in the parts per million scale, when it comes to dissolved oxygen you have to be concerned about the parts per billion scale, so that is how sensitive beer is to oxygen. A cask at a pub will only last 4 days or so before the beer is ruined by oxygen. But if you drink your beer quickly enough then it matters not.

I've had hop forward beers like NEIPA's spoil in less than a week because I didn't purge a gas line before hooking upto the keg. When I mean spoil I mean go from nice hoppy bright beer to undrinkable in less than a week, but the colour and hop aroma and flavour are impacted within 24hours. The same NEIPA still tastes good months later if the keg and lines are properly purged. So yes, it pays to be paranoid about air and oxygen. It just requires a bit of planning and pre-thinking so why wouldn't you take all the reasonable precautions you can?
 
The reason for the pressure is to make sure the lid of the keg is properly seated and not leaking. With regards to the Oxygen I honestly do not detect any problem with my beer and I have never transfered oxygen free ever? Maybe I need to do an experiment with my new kegs and purge them before I fill but then how do I add my priming sugar? I never make American style beers, thank god , maybe the oxidation is more detectable with this sort of concoction ? What I will say about oxygen free... its a great way of homebrew stores selling stuff 🤣
I reckon I will just plow on as before the beer I make is still way better than anything I can buy... beer must have been ***** back in the day... oh no wait it was actually much better ... well to grumpy old gits like me it was 🤣
 

Latest posts

Back
Top