This is another episode in our Beginner’s series where we talk about packaging your beer after fermentation. Sit back and enjoy.
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Show Transcript it is AI generated and will have many errors.
Colter Wilson: It’s time for another episode in our beginner series. And today, Hey, we’re going to talk about different methods for packaging beer. So it’s a fundamental piece of homebrewing, and I always get a lot of questions from beginners, specifically about packaging. So today it’s all about. Bottles kegs and cans this week on homebrewing DIY
Welcome back to homebrewing DIY the podcast that takes on the do it yourself. Aspect of homebrewing. Gadgets, contraptions and parts. The show covers it all on this [00:01:00] week’s episode. We’re talking about bottles, kegs, and cans, the different methods in our beginner series. When we talk about how you package your beer for consumption.
But first I’d like to thank all of our patrons over a Patrion. It’s because of you that this show can come to you week after week, head on over to patriot.com forward slash homebrewing DIY, and give it any amount. Your support is going to help the show come to you week after week. Also, if you want to give one time support, you can head on over to coffee.com.
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So if you’re going to buy some equipment or ingredients from adventures in homebrewing, or you want to buy the brew father homebrewing software, click on our website, click on that banner. That way you can support the show because they know that we sent you. Kind of got a cool thing going on with my home brew club.
We’ve been mostly doing online. We did have one or two in person meetings over the summer. God, I miss having an in-person meeting, but you know, with COVID just having large groups and specifically large groups sitting around a tight table, definitely larger than 10 is just really going to work out. So we would definitely have to do the [00:03:00] online meeting, but we’ve.
W we’ve been just kind of essentially having a monthly happy hour where we just kind of talk with each other. And finally, this month we decided to do a beer swap. So we put a cooler out at one of our houses, bring a bottle, take a bottle. And I’m excited to have a home brew club meeting where I get to taste other people’s beers.
So instead of just drinking my own and having a conversation. So pretty excited about that. Well, let’s, uh, I guess jump into this week’s episode where we’re going to talk about bottles, kegs, and cans.
Well, let’s dive into another beginner series episode, where I’m going to specifically talk about packaging of beer. This is going to be a deep dive. We’re going to talk [00:04:00] not much about the brewing process itself, and we’re really going to get into that portion where you’re completely done fermenting, and you’re going to package your beer.
I think what we should talk about first though, is kind of, when do you want to package your beer? So you’re in the fermentation process and you need to tell yourself when now there are two schools of thought out there there’s the secondary school of thought, which literally means exactly what I just said.
People. I think that you need to do some sort of secondary fermentation, usually geared around clarifying your beer to get ready for the packaging so that you’re not putting a lot of Trube and yeast cake into your packaging. So for example, no matter how you’re going to package, whether you’re you’re bottling your kegging or you’re canning, you kind of want to leave.
All of [00:05:00] the yeast cake and hops and, and proteins and everything. That’s kinda settled to the bottom. You want to leave that back? And so. You kind of have to know when to package. So if we’re going to talk about secondaries, the secondary fermentation and the idea behind it would be that you’re going to, once your beer is completely finished with its primary, you’re going to move it into secondary and let it sit there for a week at room temperature and kind of let the proteins, the.
Hot particulates in all of the remaining yeast. That’s in suspension, kind of settled down into another yeast cake at the bottom. It’s going to be much smaller than your original primary fermentation. You’re going to rack it off then into your bottling bucket or into a keg or into your canner. Whichever, however, you’re going to do that.
Then you’re going to go from there into the actual packaging. And so at that point, you’ve kind of given your beer enough time to make sure that it’s completely finished with its fermentation and you’ve tried to get as much of the sediments out of it so that they don’t end up in your final beer.
And back in the days, when we weren’t doing a lot of hazy IPA days, this is a big deal. You want it to have a really clear beer and if you’re. Brewing certain types of beer for things like competition. It’s going to be very, very important to want to have crystal clear, clean beer. You know, appearance means something and it means something to me.
So that is one school of thought. The other school of thought is once it’s finished and primary, just get it in there once everything’s kind of settled out. So there’s there’s you could leave it. On the yeast cake for a while afterwards and use that as a method to let everything settle down as much as you can, when you rack it off, try not to get as much of the yeast cake in there to whatever your [00:07:00] bottling bucket or your keg.
Or you can do the third thing, which is what I do. I personally, I cold crash my beers and what cold crashing is is once my beer is completely finished with its primary fermentation you’re then going to get it. Really cold, like below 40 above freezing kind of in that range and let it sit there for a solid 24 hours.
And what that’s going to do is once you cold crash, everything that’s floating around in there is going to really just drop to the bottom very quickly. And it’s going to leave your beer pretty clear. Also it’s going to compact that yeast cake into something that isn’t is easily. Stirred up from the bottom when you’re racking it off.
And so, therefore, allows you to eat more easily transfer the clearer beer. The other thing that I get a lot of questions on, on the packaging is, Hey, how do I know when my beer is finished? There’s really just only one way to really know and that’s by taking a hydrometer reading, I personally use the tilt hydrometer.
And so that is something that is floating in my beer the whole time and can tell me in. Pretty much time what my gravity is, and I just look for it to have multiple days without any change in the gravity level. So for example, if I’m shooting for a beer, that’s going to be around a 1.10. Uh, sorry, 1.010 finishing gravity.
I am going to, when it gets close to that area and stops, I’m just going to keep an eye on it and make sure that it holds it that same gravity and doesn’t change. Even if it changes a couple of points. I’m going to sit there and wait a little bit longer, because I want to make sure that the beer is completely finished and this becomes really important if you’re, if you’re into bottling having under fermented beer.
[00:09:00] A LA gets you in a position where you could possibly have bottle bombs or explosions and, or, you know, your beer is sweeter than you expect it to be. And that’s not really what you want. The other way, if you don’t have a floating hydrometer, which I think if you’re a beginner you’re not going to have, right.You’re going to have the glass hydrometer that came with your kit, or you bought one from your Homebrew shop, very inexpensive, a few bucks for a hydrometer less than $10 total. And that comes with a. Yeah, a cylinder or a graduated cylinder for you to test in. And what you’re going to want to do is when you think you, your beer should be ready, let’s say about a week after your primary fermentation, for most styles, you’re going to go in and you’re going to take a hydrometer reading.
You’re going to fill up your hydrometer floated in there and take a final gravity. Let’s say you’re shooting for a 1.010 beer. Then you’re going to wait 48 hours and test it again. [00:10:00] And if that reading has gone down at all, give it another two days. And once you get. A 48 hour gap or the reading’s the same.
Your beer is now finished and you’re ready to cold crash and package or move into secondary. Um, from, from here on out, I’m going to talk about cold crashing and packaging because that’s what I personally do. And it did for me is the best method I would like if you are a brewer that does secondary, please shoot me an email.
I’d love to have some feedback on the show. Send an email to podcast@homebrewingdiy.beer. And if you have some reasons of why you do a secondary, that I didn’t mention here, I’d love to hear some feedback and I’ll definitely read that off. So now we’re ready to package. So let’s start with the basics bottles.
That’s I would say nine times out of 10, if you’re brewing your first batch of beer. Where you’re doing smaller batches of beer, like one gallon batches [00:11:00] you’re bottling that. That’s kind of the thing that I, I very rarely hear of anyone brewing their first batch of beer and then kegging it because they already have a kegging system.
It usually starts with bottling and then moves into kegging later. So you’re going to bottle. Now, the first thing you’re going to do is you have to transfer your beer into a bottling bucket. You’re going to want to take one step further than that. And you’re going to have your bottling bucket out.
You’re going to have, and what a bottling bucket is, is it’s going to be a, let’s say a five-gallon or to the seven-gallon bucket. Something that’s going to be able to fit your entire batch of beer into it. It’s going to have a front pocket on it. That’s going to be barbed. And that’s going to allow you to have a hose with a bottling wand attached to the end, or even just a hose with a, with a crimp I’ve seen is, is another [00:12:00] example.
And, and you’re going to be able to attach that to that barbed spicket on the front of the bucket. It could have a lid. It couldn’t have a lid I’ve even seen people fermenting bottling buckets. It’s completely up to you. But the spicket is really the important piece here. You’re going to have that. But the first thing you’re going to do is you need to get your priming sugar ready.
Now I am going to tell you that based on the style of your beer, you’re going to have different priming levels and. For the most part, most of your beers are going to be anywhere between two to three atmospheres of pressure, probably closer to like 2.5. And so the idea is that for the most part, it’s going to be generally the same amount of.
Priming sugar for most of your bottling techniques, but depending on the style and that’s why I’m not going to really call out the amounts [00:13:00] here. It’s always best to know what style you’re going to have and set your. Atmospheres of pressure for your carbonation accordingly. Now you can do that in your homebrewing software.
A lot of them like brew father, for example, which is a sponsor of this show, has the ability to set your atmospheres. And it will actually set up what your priming sugar should look like. There are actually Brewer’s friend’s website has priming sugar calculators that you can use. And yeah, it’s going to allow you to go and say, Hey, I want.
3.5 atmospheres of pressure. And it’s going to tell you how many, how much sugar to put into your beer? Uh, use those calculators. It’s I actually highly recommend when you’re just starting out to using those calculators, because then, you know, you’re putting the right amount of sugar in. And this is really important because you want to do so in a safe [00:14:00] manner to make sure that you’re not going to give yourself bottle bombs and come down to either a giant mess or have glass exploding all over in your basement or in your closet.
So these are some things to think about. So. Just make sure at the beginning, if you’re using an extract kit or you have a kit, do use the amount of sugar that your instructions tell you to use. Usually it comes in a pre-measured package do that. If you’re using a. If you’re doing it on your own, use a calculator and I highly recommend it.
Now, what you’re going to do though, is you’re going to mix your sugar with some water. It’s going to be generally a 50 50 mix. And the reason you’re doing that, as you’re going to turn it into a syrup, essentially, you’re making simple syrup out of your sugar, and then you’re going to turn around and you’re going to pour that straight into the bottling bucket.
In the bottom. And I do recommend you putting the [00:15:00] sugar in first and then racking your beer on top of the sugar. And this does a couple of things. The first thing it’s going to do is it allows you to transfer your beer without stirring up the beer too much. You don’t like, this is kind of one of the parts that people really struggle with when it comes with bottling.
Is, you do want to mix the sugar really well with the beer and have it evenly mixed so that it’s throughout the entire solution, but you also don’t want to go in and stir it up to the place where you’re getting a lot of oxygen in your beer. Because right now you’re in a place where you want to limit the amount of oxygen.
As much as possible so that your beer does not become oxidized. Obviously you’re just starting out. You don’t have a ton of equipment. You’re, you’re not able to take like CO2 and blanket the entire bucket with CO2 or anything like that, but just putting the sugar in the bottom and then. Racking on top of the sugar is going to help you get [00:16:00] that mix throughout a lot easier.
And if you do stir it, just stirring it really slowly and lightly not doing it. Super vigorously is going to help. Once you have your beer racked onto the sugar and mixed the route, you’re then going to go through and bottle. Now here’s a couple of places I’m going to tell you some tricks. First of all, if you’re going to bottle, make sure bottling can be a pretty messy thing, right?
And you’re going to put it into that bottling bucket, and you’re going to go from bottle to bottle. You’re going to fill them from the bottom. You’re going to fill them slowly. One thing is that the, if you’re using the bottle wand with the little red trigger in the front, that. Turns off when you lift it up, those are great.
I highly recommend getting one of those. They’re very inexpensive $4 tops for one of those from your home brew shop. And what it does is you’re going to fill it all the way to the top. Of the bottle. And then when you pull out the wand, you’re going to have the perfect [00:17:00] amount of Headspace right there.
And that’s key because you want to not, you want to have about one inch of Headspace or even a little bit less than an inch, maybe three fourths of an inch of Headspace that you’re going to cap on so that you have some head space for it to produce CO2 and to scrub some oxygen out. Cause. One cool thing about sugar in your beer and bottling is that the yeast that is floating in suspension?
Cause there is yeast in your beer. You’ve not filtered it or anything or pasteurized it. So therefore there is yeast there and it’s going to eat the sugar that you put in there and it’s going to actually carbonate your beer. And any oxygen that is in there, it is going to scrub out. So you want to have as little oxygen as possible, but what is there as being used by that yeast to convert to CO2?
And so you definitely want to have that there. So a little bit of headspaces is great and something you want. It helps it also build the pressure. And so taking out the wan should leave [00:18:00] you exactly the amount of headspace. And so don’t be afraid to overfill it. One other trick is. Use the door of your dishwasher to fill on.
And here’s why bottling is going to be a pretty messy thing. So you can put your bottling bucket up on your counter and put your bottles right on the door of your dishwasher. And as you’re going from bottle to bottle, you’re going to have overflow and spill and beer sticky. And so it just can be a pretty messy experience and hard to clean up.
But when you do it this way, uh, you can even bow. You can even crimp your bottles with your, with your. Your capper right on the door and then just rinse them off and then put them where, you know, altogether in a row. And when you’re all done, you just close the door and it goes right down the drain. So I would say that was a game changer for me when I was bottling.
Cause the first time I tried to bottle, I had an I D I did have a bar in my house and I tried to do it in my bar area on the [00:19:00] floor. And it was just messy and it took me forever to clean up. So. The dishwasher door is key and bottling on the dishwasher. Door is key. Then once you have your bottles filled, I would say it’s always best.
If you can have a friend or, or your wife to help you bottle, because then you can bottle and cap quickly, you can have one person bottle. Fill the bottle and then one person cap. That’s always a great way to do it, but if you are doing your yourself, I would say, fill a few bottles, cap a few bottles and do it in that kind of cadence.
If you’re doing a five gallon batch and you’re bottling in 12 ounce bottles. You should get anywhere between 48 and 54 to 56 bottles, somewhere in there is where you’ll end up. And if you’re doing any batches smaller, it’ll go back from there. If you do 22 ounce bottles, which I I’m a big fan of the 22 ounce bomber when I bottle, just because you have less to do, it’s actually about 20 to 22 bombers out of a five gallon batch.
[00:20:00] And. If you’re, if you’re doing other sizes and formats, because there’s definitely different formats and sizes out there, you’re, you’re gonna, they’re all gonna vary the next way. And I will look, let’s talk let’s now, now that we’ve talked about bottling, there’s the next stage of bottling, which is the bottle conditioning piece.And so now you’re going to you, you’ve bottled and packaged your beer. You now have to wait for it to carve up and getting that carbonation there is going to take awhile. And so you’ve got to wait for the yeast to produce combination. There’s not a ton of yeast. There’s not like a big yeast cake in there or anything like that.
And so you have to wait for that to get active. And so in order to do that, you got to give it time. I would say it. I personally wait. Around three weeks for my bottles to carb up and give them enough time. And that to me [00:21:00] works, I’ve had beers carve up in a week. I’ve had them carve up in two weeks, but three weeks is always my safe spot.
And what I do is I keep them in a dark area. I forget about them and here’s a, a big trick out there. And I actually saw this trick from Homebrew King on Tik TOK, and I’m gonna totally taking it next time. I’d have to bottle a whole batch is. He takes one of those plastic storage bins. Like you would store like Christmas decorations in or something like that.
And he puts all of his bottles of beer in there, and then he takes a, uh, a blanket and he throws it on top of there. Couple of things, it keeps it at room temperature. You have your beer stored somewhere. You also are insulating yourself against a bottle bomb. Now, the reason I keep talking about bottle bombs is that you haven’t really.
Brewed a lot of beer until you’ve had a bottle bomb. It’s gonna generally happen to everybody at some [00:22:00] point, or at least at OERB over copper carbonation or an under carbonation. It’s just kind of part of bottling, but you want to take precautions. And that to me is a great precaution, take that tub, fill it with your bottles of beer, throw a blanket on top of it.
Then if you do have a bottle bomb, it just kind of stays in that container. And then all you gotta do is clean the blanket, pick out some glass and then wash off your bottles and it’s good to go. You’re not having to clean up a gigantic mess and not have it contained in your home. So that’s another great trick with bottling.
So give it a couple of weeks. Crack the beer drink it. You’re good to go. Now I think we’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’re going to talk about kegging as a way of packaging your beer.
And we’re back and we’re now going to jump in, we’re still talking about packaging, your beer, but we’re going to talk about our second method, which is kegging. Now I’m going to tell you a personal story about me. I brewed my first batch of beer. It was an Amber ale. I got it as a kid at the beer nut in salt Lake city, Utah.
And I will always shout out to the beard out. One of my favorite home brew shops out there. I just, I love the crew there and they’ve been around for a, for a very, very long time. So just, you know, support your local Homebrew shop. But that’s where I bought my first kit about an Amber ale kit went in, but you know, the bucket.
Then, it was a, it was an extract kit and I bought all the stuff I needed to make beer. I had all the bottles and I did everything I was supposed to do, I packaged it. Then I did the bottling and after I was done bottling, I was like, that sucked. I. Didn’t love bottling. And especially when I had to fill 48 bottles of beer.
So when I made my second batch of beer, while it was fermenting, I went and bought me a, uh, a one keg set up [00:24:00] and started kegging beer. And so. I went from my first batch to my second batch and all my second batch, I was kegging. Now, the reason I was able to do that was that in my bar, in my house at the time I actually had a mini fridge.
It was actually an old wine fridge that actually got cold enough for me to just take the racks out and it would get below 40. And so I could actually keep a keg in there with a picnic tap and. It, everything kind of fit in that little fridge. And so I already had a fridge and that’s the number one thing you need before you go get a kegging system is having a fridge.
The other thing is that once you have a fridge, you can then get the equipment to actually keg. Now, the reason you need a fridge is it has to do with carbonation. You are when you’re kegging, chances are the number one way that you’re going to carbonate your beer is through forced [00:25:00] carbonation, which means that you’re going to put your CO2 tank on your, your, or you’re going to put gas on your beer, and you’re going to put it at a high enough pressure to actually pump the CO2 into your beer and do it that way.
We’ll get into that later. But. The reason you have to have a fridge is that carbonation absorbs into beer better when it’s cold. That’s why cold, bubbly beers, delicious. And so it’s just, it’s easier to infuse CO2 into solution when you have a colder liquid versus a warmer liquid. And so if you have beer at room temperature, so for example, like when you’re.
Conditioning bottles. There’s CO2 there, but if you open them warm, they’re not going to be there. The beer itself will not be as bubbly. It will that you will have less CO2 in solution as if you went and throw it in the fridge. Got a cold and then drink it. And that’s the same [00:26:00] idea with a keg, but if you’re forced carbonating, it’s the same idea.
You, it takes less gas to actually get you to the same atmospheres in solution. And what that means is that the CO2 actually is in the solution and bubbly. When it’s colder, it just absorbs into the liquid easier. I don’t know the exact science behind it. I wish I did. And maybe that’s something I should have a guest on the show to really talk about, but it does work.
A warm beer is not going to be as bubbly as a cold beer. And that’s just kinda how it works then. So you have to have the fridge and then to get a kegging set up and we’re going to talk super basics here. I’m not going to get into building Keizer, which I think is a great project. I’m a DIY show and we’re DIY guys here, but you don’t have to.
Build out a Keizer. If you’ve got a fridge that can fit a keg in it, maybe it has enough room to tuck [00:27:00] a five pound little CO2 tank in there with it. You’ve kind of got everything you need. To at least be ready to keg. And then what you need to get is you need to get a keg. So there are different sizes and different formats of kegs that you can get.
The two main that are used for home brewing are going to be a pin lock or a ball lock. And these are the old soda style cans that you would use for syrup. When back in the old days, I always think of the like trailers. That like you had the Pepsi trailer or the Coke trailer when I was a kid and they had the, like the, the draft soda in them and they would have.
Cans filled with syrup, not really something they use anymore. And they now do cardboard cans, cardboard boxes with bags in them, filled with that syrup. But same idea. That’s where these kegs originally came from. And then a ball lock is the format that Pepsi used [00:28:00] and a pin lock is a format that Coke used.
And that’s why you have the two different foam formats and the ball lock is the. One that most, I would say most homebrewers use. And the biggest reason is that a ball lock keg has a release tab in the middle of the lid that you could just pull with a ring. So that allows you to purge the CO2 out of the keg, whereas a pin lock.
Is going to functionally work as far as, other than the connector’s a little different, but functionally, it’s going to work the same as a ball LA keg. But the problem is, is that that release tab is. Doesn’t have the pull tab on it. It’s actually only going to release if it gets to a certain PSI, which is close to 140 PSI, and then it just fails and starts to release air and it’s meant to be a fail safe against you, possibly over [00:29:00] pressurizing the keg.
But you can get lids that fit in pin locks with the release tabs. So you can replace the lid is one option or the other option. And what I always did is if I needed to purge the keg, I just removed the gas post and I take a screwdriver and I push it down and release some air. So it’s not a big deal. The cool thing is, is.
That because ball locks are, tend to be the most in demand for homebrewers. They tend to be the more expensive when you purchase these kegs. Even if they’re used versus the pin locks tend to be more widely available and easier to find and less expensive when you actually purchase the kegs. So just throwing that out there, but you got to have a keg and once you have a keg, you’re going to then.
Need to get gas on that cake. You have to have a way of pushing the liquid out and carbonating the liquid that’s in it. And so you can purchase a CO2 tank and the [00:30:00] three sizes for the homebrewer are going to mainly be a five pound tank, a 10 pound tank, or a 20 pound tank. Personally, I have a 20 pound tank and I have to fill up my gas every two or three years.
It lasts me a really long time. And then. If you have a five pound tank, I would say it would last me a few months. So that, that that’s me personally. But the more you use CO2, the more you’re going to have to swap out or fill that take. And a 10, a 10 pound tank is going to fall out in there somewhere in between the differences.
The size of those tanks, right? A very, a five pound tank is pretty small. You’re usually able to fit it within a dorm fridge that can fit the keg. You can kind of tuck it in the back. Whereas a 20 pound tank is almost the size of the keg itself as far as the size of the CO2 tank. And usually it’s not going to have enough space to live within whatever fridge you’re using and you have to figure out a way to get the gas into the fridge externally.
So those are some things to think [00:31:00] about when you’re thinking about the size of CO2 tank, you’re going to be, you’re also going to need a regulator. And what the regulator does, it allows you to set the different pressures for, well, it regulates the CO2 that is under pressure from. Going into your keg so you can set the amount of PSI you want it to go in.
And most regulators will have another dial that kind of tells you how much gas is left in the tank. And you have a knob on the front. That’s going to allow you to then adjust the different pressures that are coming out of it so that you can say, Hey, I want to set my keg at a serving pressure of 12 PSI, and you’re going to.
You know, turn that into 12 and then you know, that the pressure in the tank is at 12. Cause that’s regulating that pressure. And so you have to have a regulator and, and they’re not super expensive. Now you can get a [00:32:00] pretty inexpensive regulator for around $50. Uh, I have a brand name on, I have Perlick ones and they’re a lot more expensive, probably closer to about $125.
But I feel like those regulators are worth the money because they are probably going to last me forever. But with regulators, they are kind of a thing that you get what you pay for because the, the cheaper ones can kind of get leaks and things like that. And not last as long, but it all depends on how much you’re using it.
But to get into kegging, you’re going to have to have a regulator. So you have to have a keg. You have to have a regulator, you have to have a CO2 tank, you have to have the tubing for your gas you have to have the connector that is going to, or that’s going to connect to your kegs. So for example, if you’re going to have a ball lock on your gas line, you’re going to have to have a ball lock gas connector.
That’s going to pop right onto there. And then you’re going to have to have a. Liquid [00:33:00] post out to, you’re gonna have to have a liquid line out to some sort of faucet. So for example, if you’re going to serve from picnic tap, you would have to have a liquid connector for a ball lock or a pin lock. And then it’s going to have a, a piece of hose.
That’s going to go out to a Cobra head or a picnic tab, and then you’re going to be able to serve. And that’s going to allow you to hold, you know, turn it on and off as you serve. If you’re going to have faucets. You’re going to have to have something to Mount those faucets on. And then that’s when we’re going to get into Keizer and such.
And like I said, that’s a whole different show, but I’m just explaining the basic setup to get kegging. If you wanted to get kegging now. A couple of things when we’re talking about packaging to kegging. So for example, let’s say you’ve now finished your beer. You’ve now done your test to make sure that you’re ready to package your beer.
So couple of steps are going to be very different here. So the next step here is going to be, you’re going to [00:34:00] transfer it into your keg. Now I’m going to talk about just. Taking the lid off and putting it in. And before I get a nasty email where somebody’s talking to me about oxygen free transfers, I get it.
And that could be a show. Unto itself. And so that’s not what I’m trying to talk about here. We’re just talking about a beginner brewer. So you could take the bottling bucket and use the spicket to put it in there. You could use the auto siphon. This is usually what I do when I w when I just fill a keg straight from a fermenter, I would take an auto siphon.
I would siphon it from my primary fermentor after I’ve been cold crashing it. And it’s just going to fill up the keg once the kegs full, then I’m going to stop it. I’ll put the lid on the keg. I’m going to then pressurize the keg to my carbonating pressure. We’ll get into that in a minute. And then once I get it pressurized to there, I then pull the [00:35:00] tab on the top of my keg and purge all of the oxygen out of it so that there’s only CO2 in there.
And then I have it by fridge getting cold and waiting to carbonate. So now let’s talk about carbonating, a keg of beer, and this is something that I get a lot of questions about. And the reason I get a lot of questions is there’s a lot of different ways to do it. And none of them are wrong. There’s you can set it to your serving pressure and give it a week.
Maybe two, I would say probably closer to a week. And in that week, you’re slowly. Pardon me, you’re slowly carving it up and you’re going to then get beer. That’s going to be carbonated at the level that you expect it to be. And it’s going to be at your serving pressure, usually takes about a week. Then there’s the forced carbonating where that is for these.
These are all forced carpeting. There’s like a fast carbonation method, which is, [00:36:00] and, and what I’ve found personally is that if I crank it up to 40. PSI and your cat can totally handle 40 PSI. No problem. Kegs can go all the way to 140 PSI before the poppet fails on the top, but we’re just gonna. Say, you know, 40 PSI, you’re not going to have any problems, throw it up to 40.
Let us sit there for about 24 hours. And then I just bring it down to serving pressure. And then I give it one more day and that thing’s pouring like a dream. That’s how I force carbonate. My beers is it does take two days, but it’s a 24 hours at 40 people do the shake methods where they’re shaking their beer in the keg to get more.
Gas into the beer and they do work. I don’t even do that, I just throw it at 40, for 24 hours. And I then pull it back down. Probably close to around 12 PSI, which is my serving pressure. I let it sit. [00:37:00] And even if I pour it off at 24 hours, there’s, it’s got a good amount of carbonation. It’s definitely drinkable, but it’s, it’s actually right where it should be another day later.
And that’s what my personal method is. Another way to the quick carb is you can do 20 PSI for about three days and you’re going to end up in it. It a place where it’s going to be at the right level of carbonation for your serving pressure, but that’s completely up to you. Another thing that you can and do with kegs.
And this is something I do because I have more kegs than I have beer space. And so one thing you can do, and just like you did for the bottling bucket, you could actually do a sugar solution, just like you did for bottling. You can add that. Into that, that sugar syrup right into your keg, rack your beer on top of that sugar solution, seal it up.
I would put just a touch of CO2 to make sure that everything’s sealed up and not a lot, maybe [00:38:00] one PSIS all. And then leave it sitting out for a couple of weeks at room temperature and that is also going to carbonate your beer because it’s going to be essentially one giant bottle. So it’s going to condition just like a bottle conditioned beer would, and that works fine.
I’ve done that many, many times. W for example, had a full keg and I have more beer than I have keg space. I’ll just. Totally do it that way. And that works really well. The third method for packaging is going to be canny and this one’s going to be pretty simple because. The reason I brought up canning is this is more, this is newer for the home brewer and that’s because can there we’re finally at a place where some canned seamers are actually priced at a level where a homebrewer can generally afford them.
For example, when crawlers first came out, the cans seamers for those are. Two three, $4,000 depending on the [00:39:00] brand. And so those were well outside of your average home brewer. Whereas now we’ve got some cancer centers that are geared towards the homebrewer. So let’s talk about the first one is a cannular.
Now the cannular is a can seamer and all it is is it’s a machine you’re going to get your cans. One thing with canning there, you can do it either way. You can. Use kegged beer and yeah. Have a beer gun or counter pressure chiller, a counter pressure filler and fill up the can into just like with a beer gun or something like that.
And that’s a whole different show when we talk about transferring beers into things like that with beer guns, and maybe that’s, that’s a different one, but you would feel. Already carbonated beer into the cans. So think just like when you go get a, a, a crowler from a, a brewery and they just like, fill it, like it’s a growler.
And then just seem the [00:40:00] can right there at the bar. Same idea. You’re going to take like a beer gun, purge it with CO2. You’re then going to fill it with your beer gun, put the lid on it. You do, it’ll be some foam. You just set it right on the phone, run it right through the seamer. And then it’s going to be a canned beer.
That’s probably the easiest way to canned beer. The reason I like cans is obviously just convenience. You go, camping cans are way better than bottles. You don’t worry about broken glass, those kinds of things. They’re easier to transport in general and just the convenience of cans. Right. We all know. Why we like cans better than bottles.
They just don’t break. Uh, the they’re not reusable. So that is one thing to think about, whereas bottles you can use over and over again, but they’re also pre cans are pretty inexpensive with the cannular. It’s pretty inexpensive can seamer. I think you can get one for about five 99, $600 somewhere in there.
And it’s also one, one thing though, is that [00:41:00] you have to use. Cannular Cannes with cannular cam seamer. And so they are a little bit more than if you were to just go down to a brewery and ask them for a layer off their PA palette. That’s a great way to get cans. And so therefore that is one drawback. You have to go, not the.
Going to your home or your store is a problem, but you have to use the special cans for the cannular cans seamer. The other one is I I’ve had on the show. I did have the CEO of October can seamers on our show. We did an entire show on it and highly recommend going back and listening to it. It’s a great show, but.
If you’re going to use an October, you can use any can on that can seamer and it’s a little bit more expensive, I think a couple hundred dollars more upfront, but then in the long run, you’re going to save money. You can just go buy a. Bunch of ball cans. A lot of home brew shops we’ll buy a pallet of cans and just sell the cans to homebrewers [00:42:00] cans are pretty inexpensive.
They shouldn’t be more than a nickel, a can somewhere in there. And you’re going to be able to do all different sizes. You can do, you know, 16 ounce cans. 22 ounce cans. You could do 32 ounce cans or 12 ounce cans. It’s up to you. Uh, you just set the different level in the cans, seamer, and then you run it through the seamer and fill it that way.
You can also force carbonate in a can. That is something you could do. I would recommend, you know, just like with the bottling, bucket’s gonna be the same process. You’re just going to, can it, instead of. Putting it in a bottle and you could then let wait for it for a couple of weeks at room temperature and have it force carbonate.
And the, can I D at that point, if you, if you’re, if you’re going to spend the money on a canning system, I would recommend you probably have a kegging system first, but that’s completely up to you and how you want to do it. Well, now that we’re about 45, five minutes into this show, I think we’re [00:43:00] kind of running up on time.
And you’re talking about packaging, but I’d love to hear maybe some of your tricks and tips on how you package your beer. Maybe. Did I not say something right? I’d love to hear, hear feedback from anyone. You can always shoot me an email to podcast@homebrewingdiy.beer, and yeah, we’ll wrap up the show and, uh, and we’ll, we’ll talk to you all next week.
well, thanks for sticking around and listening to a, yet another show in our beginner series. Next week, we will have a guest again. So we’ll start having guests again for the next little while, and then we’ll probably dive into more beginner episodes. You can also follow us on social media. We’re on [00:44:00] Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, all homebrewing DIY one word, and you can find us on all of those social media channels.
Well, that’s it for this week. And we’ll talk to you next week on homebrewing DIY
