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It's Kegging Time!


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What Ben said. Even with a font on my kegerator I don't have much issue with foamy first pours. It is a flooded font though and I do run chilled water through it when I'm having a few on a warm/hot day, but it's also a lot more solid (thicker walled) than the ones that come standard with kegerators which I feel has some effect on preventing the beer lines warming up too much inside it. Mounted on a door though, you won't really have any problems at all because the line will be kept cold all the way to the tap. Understand not drilling holes in a new fridge, but at the same time the advantage of a keg fridge is not having to constantly open the door to get beer out ?

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I have a kegerator and yes the first pour on a hot day is shithouse. There is an easy fix though. 

1. Home from work. Pour half glass of foamy shit

2. Go and change into nice comfy clothes.

3. 5 mins later come and pour the other 3/4 of a glass after the foamy shit has died down.  Perfect beer and then your good for the whole night. 

 

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Yup, that's usually what I do with the first pour if it is like that, saves wasting beer. I'll usually keep filling the glass until the head reaches the top, then go do something while it settles and top up after. 

I don't get it every time though, even on a hot day. And sometimes I use the flow control to restrict it while it's foaming. I always turn the font pump on (just a small bilge pump that sits in a cut off 3L juice bottle filled with water) when I get home though so it starts cooling the font straight away. On weekends I turn it on when I wake up so it's nice and cool by the time I have a beer later on. 

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Just finished kegging my red ale, which will sit on serving pressure for now until I go to bed later (I need the gas for the pilsner keg in the meantime), then I'll bump it up to 50psi until tomorrow some time around lunch or just after. Should have it nicely carbonated by tomorrow night hopefully. This one is the last to go on tap at this house and probably the last one fermented here too. Thought about doing the pale ale next but I don't want it sitting around for weeks before it's tapped. 

I planned to put the few litres surplus into the little keg as I usually do but its PRV is leaking gas, so that one is out of action for the moment. 

I'll also be putting the stout into a keg today, so it can mature for next winter. 

Cheers

Kelsey

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Stout is kegged, currently sitting on serving pressure gas next to the kegerator just to get a bit of pressure into it for storage. I'll probably tap it around the start of June next year as I expect it will take a couple of months to get through and I don't want any of it left by the time the weather begins to warm up again.

Fermenter sample tasted good considering the ambient fermentation conditions although it was still around the low 20s for the bulk of fermentation. I don't even know how long it's been sitting in there, probably about 3 weeks. Another 7-8 months maturing in the keg should see it really nice. Came out at 8.5% ABV in the end, after finishing at 1.021 (pretty much bang on predicted FG) from an OG of 1.0855 with 1056 yeast. Judging by the look of the brew, it finished in about 6 days. Krausen was minimal, only reaching about 1.5 inches at most which surprised me as I was expecting a volcano. No finings were used. Didn't quite get the full 19 litres due to an elevated level of trub in the fermenter, but probably something around 18 litres which is fine. 

Looking forward to tasting once on tap!

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8 hours ago, The Captain1525230099 said:

I’ve been reading a little about this. Seems great for the darker beers that require aging. How long can you keep beers in kegs for using this method?

6+ months for my winter stout and it was outstanding. 

Bjcp group scored it 42 in the bottle and I scored it 44 on tap 

Stored at 20 ° entire time in a spare fridge that doesn't chill properly anymore , natural carbing has a few upsides but mostly that yeast process any oxygen picked up during transfer 

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13 hours ago, The Captain1525230099 said:

Nice one @Mark D Pirate

That is an outstanding score. 

Pretty much what you have said has confirmed all that I’ve been reading about. When I go to keg I’m going to make sure I have a few extra kegs so I can at least give this a crack once. It’s a long time to hold a keg up if you haven’t got lots of em. 

Yeah thats where i have run into problems. I reckon you need 3 kegs for every tap. I have 4 for my two taps and one which i am struggling for spare parts for. I would love to keg a Belgian dark strong for a year and see how it comes out but am stuck with bottling in the meantime.

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10 minutes ago, Greeny1525229549 said:

Yeah thats where i have run into problems. I reckon you need 3 kegs for every tap. I have 4 for my two taps and one which i am struggling for spare parts for. I would love to keg a Belgian dark strong for a year and see how it comes out but am stuck with bottling in the meantime.

With the set up I’m going to get, there’s going to be three new kegs. I can also get 5 refurbished ones for $350 I think so I might do that. Least then there will be some wriggle room for storage of long term beers

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1 hour ago, Greeny1525229549 said:

Yeah its a good idea captain. Must say im torn with the decision. 10% abv beers dont get smashed like 5% ones and a keg could take up the tap for a long time. If i was to keg a long term though id definitely natural carbonate.

I really don’t do big beers, so that’ll work for me. I think my biggest to date is about 6.9% I really would much rather have 6 5% beers than 2 10% beers. Each to their own though. 

Depends on style of course. Had a Shiraz Oaked Russian Imperial stout (12.5%) during winter which took me about an hour to sip away at. It was delicious. 

Still I think these big beers can be bottled. 

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I think it's all relative. If you only had two taps, then you probably wouldn't want a big beer taking one up for ages. On the other hand if you had 4 or 5 taps, it doesn't really matter because you've still got enough taps for a variety of regular drinking beers. In my case, one tap out of the three is always on soda water now, so I only ever have two regular drinking beers on the others at any time. As such it doesn't really worry me kegging a big stout because it can take up residence in the back of the kegerator and doesn't really matter how long it takes to be emptied, and the soda water can be temporarily removed and replaced with a beer. The other tap just continues on with beer like it always did.

The other reason for it is currently I don't have any way of actually bottling beer. I have plenty enough bottles and crown seals, but no way to cap them. I'll be looking to rectify that situation once we move though.

 

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