conditioning in keg

[jweez]

Alright, Ive been reading through a ton of different posts and still havent found a definitive answer.

Can you warm condition (room temperature) a beer in a keg, without priming it? And how long can you let it condition for? I know i should purge the o2, and maybe leave it sealed with a little co2. I would rather not put any sugar in, just carbonate slow and low when its almost ready to be tossed in the kegerator.

I am mostly going to brew porters, and stouts, and the occasional ipa.

Any info would be great. Thanks guys.

 

[jweez]

another thought...

is it better to condition the keg, and then carb it. or is it better to carb the beer and let it sit/condition in the kegerator?

my method now is to:
primary for 2 weeks
keg, purge, refrigerate overnight
set psi to proper carbonation for 5 days
let beer condition for about 10 more days in kegerator
drink...

thanks

 

[944play]

You can let it go as long as you like, but beer doesn't get fresher by sitting around, and staling reactions happen about twice as fast per every 10ºC warmer.

Active yeast do lots of good stuff for your beer (especially absorb free oxygen), and sugar is cheaper than bottled CO2. If the beer will have to sit, warm, in a keg, it may as well be carbonating naturally. What's the reason not to prime?

 

[bartbert]

For the most part, I think you can consider a keg to be a really big bottle. But the ability to purge the oxygen and fill the headspace with CO2 is an advantage that bottles don't have. So while I wouldn't recommend bottling without priming sugar, I think it is perfectly fine to let a beer condition in a keg as long as the head space has been purged of oxygen.

Personally, I fill my kegs to about 20 lbs and leave them to condition at room temperature for a couple of weeks. I recheck them once a week because the pressure will initially drop as the CO2 goes into solution. A week or so before I'm ready to drink it, I'll put the keg in the kegerator and reset the pressure to about 12 lbs. It seems to work for me.

 

[Sarrsipius]

Yesterday I tapped a Belgian dark strong that I made last August. It has been in the pantry at room temp for 10 months and it is AWESOME!!! It depends on the beer style. If it ages well like the BDSA it works fine. After I kegged the beer I purged with C02 and then put 30psi on it to seal the lid well. Then I put it in the pantry and hadn't touched it since, until yesterday. This is the longest I've aged in a keg and it worked great at room temp. I was very careful about sanitization when I kegged that beer ( not that I'm not usually but I was very conscious on this one) because I knew it would be aging at warmer temps.

 

[tippetsnapper]

I let my beers condition/secondary in the keg all the time. I too purge out all the oxygen, then let her sit for up to a month. I find it takes longer to condition when stored in bulk (keg) than in bottles, but perhaps that's my imagination. When finished conditioning, I'll crash cool then run the tap to spew out any yeast or whatever that has accumulated in the bottom of the keg, then carbonate and enjoy.