Carbonation/Keggin question

I read through much of the stickies in the bottling/kegging section but I am still a bit lost on "burst" carbing.

I made the move from extract/bottling to all grain/kegging in one fell swoop with my last batch. Everything went great (except that I had some stuck sparge issues that led to me having only around 4.5 gallons total beer going into the keg) and I put everything in the keg after about 4 weeks in primary, 1 week in secondary to dry hop.

Now what I did was up the pressure to 30 psi last night when I kegged. Tonight when I get home, I will drop it down to 10 psi, which has been the perfect serving pressure for all my commercial kegs that I've used in the kegerator previously.

I haven't seen this in any of the stickies is my question. When I drop the pressure to 10 psi, should I bleed the pressure on the sanke coupler or just drop it and let it equilibrate? Thanks!

thejuanald said:

When I drop the pressure to 10 psi, should I bleed the tank or just drop it and let it equilibrate? Thanks!

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I relieve the extra pressure when I drop the psi.

30psi for one day, even at 38*F won't carb fully. At 38*F, try 30psi 24 hrs, 20psi 48 hrs, and then drop to 10psi and see how you're doing.

Unless I'm in a real rush, I usually just let it sit cold at serving pressure for a couple weeks so it carbs and conditions at the same time.

BigFloyd said:

I relieve the extra pressure when I drop the psi.

30psi for one day, even at 38*F won't carb fully. At 38*F, try 30psi 24 hrs, 20psi 48 hrs, and then drop to 10psi and see how you're doing.

Unless I'm in a real rush, I usually just let it sit cold at serving pressure for a couple weeks so it carbs and conditions at the same time.

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Yeah, I think after this one I will just let it carb up over a few weeks, it's just that this beer was in primary for a long time and then dry hopped for a week so I feel it's probably conditioned pretty well. Plus, it will be easier now that I have a pipeline of sorts going to wait.

I have another question, I only have one coupler and beer line. I had a commercial half barrel keg connected and I disconnected that keg that I had been serving out of. Will that keg be okay sitting around un-tapped with no CO2 going into it?

thejuanald said:

I have another question, I only have one coupler and beer line. I had a commercial half barrel keg connected and I disconnected that keg that I had been serving out of. Will that keg be okay sitting around un-tapped with no CO2 going into it?

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Sure, so long as it has been well-purged with CO2 so that there's little to no air hanging around in there to oxidize the brew.

BigFloyd said:

Sure, so long as it has been well-purged with CO2 so that there's little to no air hanging around in there to oxidize the brew.

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Great, yeah, we'd been serving out of it for some time so it's likely half full and it was flowing great. I figured it would be fine, I just wanted to make sure.