Forced Carbonation Question

[woodske1]

Anyone have experience Force Carbonating a Sankey Keg? I've done cornelius ones, but want to make the leap to Sankey Kegs. I was wondering if someone could please share their wisdom with me.

Do I need any special fittings/equipment? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Also curious if anyone has ever tried force carbonating a Plastic Keg?

Dan

[South County]

Like everything its doable, consistency is your biggest enemy here without being able to get a Zahm on it. "TTP", time, temp, pressure are your parameters. Ive seen some setups with modified spears that have a stone on the end and then the carbed beer transferred to another keg. In the end its all a pain at that scale. As far as plastic kegs you would be fine your pumping 12-13 psi max into the keg to carb, serving pressures can near 18 psi and the bursting pressure on plastic kegs is near 90 psi I think. Im sure others could caution against it.

[lbc llc]

i do some force carbonating in the kegs through the speers. it takes a little longer than I would like, and consistency is a little bit of a problem as noted. overall, i think that the head retention is not as good as when using a stone, and the process could benefit from some natural carbonation, topped off by the forced co2.

dan

[gitchegumee]

Why are you carbonating in a keg vs. tank? I can think of no advantage. I wouldn't do it through the spear. You'll only blow bubbles in your beer and foam it. Hence the head formation/retention issues. Beer should only foam in the glass. Put the pressure on top through the gas valve and let it sit longer. If you're hell-bent on carbonating in the keg, you could daisy-chain many together to try and even out the carbonation consistency. Good luck!

[chaser]

I do this with pilot batches on our 1/2 bbl system and barrel aged beers where there isnt enough beer to put into a tank and actually reach the carbonation stone (our smallest brite tank is 30 bbls). we hook co2 in through the gas valve and leave it pumping in 25-30 psi in the cold room for three days. Consistency is always variable as you would guess, but as long as the beer is served fairly immediately after carbonation it is usually fine. It is when a keg gets left with 30 psi of head pressure in it for a couple months in the cooler before it gets poured that we have foamy, over carbonated beer. we have also 'daisy chained' up to 14 kegs of barrel aged beer together and it worked fine, slowly moving the beer throughout the 14 kegs and carbonating it along the way. the result was 7 bbls worth of blended and carbonated scotch ale aged in bourbon barrels. Ive known quite a few pub brewers who carbonate small batches of root beer etc. this way.

[beerking1]

We had a batch that one of the brewing assistants kegged too soon, and was not carbonated enough. We use plastic kegs, and had said brewing assistant push 25-30 PSI into each kegs, shake and let sit for a few hours, then repeat.
After giving these kegs ~24 hours to settle, it was fine, except for the head retention issues noted earlier. Carbonation was not a fine a bead as usual either.

[woodske1]

Thanks for the insight...glad to see it can be done just as easily with Plastic Kegs! Consistent results will be tough, but going to go through it with some trial and error. If anyone else has suggestions/stories from their own experience I would greatly appreciate it.

Dan

[James Murray]

When we do a single barrel release, i pull it off into Microstar 5 gallon sankeys. I simply get them cold over a period of a day or so. Rig up a sankey with a CO2 line hooked up to the beer out line and a blow off hooked up to the gas in line. I give it 30 psi, open the blow off for 10 seconds, rest, and repeat 3-6 times depending on the style of beer and desired carbonation. It is not neccessarily consistent, but it is quick, easy, and yields good results.

James Murray
Lead Brewer
Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits
San Diego, CA

[safety man]

there is a way to determine co2 volumes in a sankey keg. when i was a quality control manager at a large brewery i was required to check carbonation levels in kegs to make sure no co2 was being lost in the packaging process. Basically it is a picnic pump type hook up with a digital thermometer and a psi gauge on the outlet. run some beer through until the temp drops and check your pressure gauge. i believe this rig is available through zahm and nagel.