Hoping to keg, co2 problems

[MarkyP]

Hey guys first post here, about to make the leap into homebrewing, been reading some books, the forums and watched a lot of youtibe vids. Looking forward to my first brew day and have got all the equipment to get brewing being delivered.
I'm looking to keg instead of bottling and here's where I'm running into some issues. I'm moving back home to ireland in like 2 weeks and after some research into purchasing a co2 tank to carb and dispense my beer it seems it's very hard to purchase a food grade co2 tank for personal use in Ireland. So I'm thinking about buying some 16 gram co2 cartridges from my local homebrew shop ( 2hour drive ) and using them to purge and dispense my beer from the keg. So some questions I need some help with is.

(1) can I use priming sugar to carbonate my 5 gallon batch inside the corny keg, and do I just use the regular amount of sugar as bottling?

(2) how would I purge a keg using the co2 cartridges so my beer doesn't get any off flavors from the oxygen in the headspace in the keg. Will this use a lot of 16 cartridges

(3) will purging the keg effect the ability of the yeast to carbonate the beer.

(4) is it crazy to even consider carbonating a keg with only these cartridges, No priming sugar?

Any answers or other suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks guys

 

[BigFloyd]

Why a food grade CO2 tank? Most of us use whatever CO2 tanks we can get our mitts on and get them filled at the welding supply shop.

If you're going to sugar carb in the keg, cut the sugar back by 40-50% compared to bottle carbing.

You could theoretically purge with 16g cartridges, but yes, it would be pricey.

Purging doesn't affect the yeast.

#4 - Yep. Insanely expensive and inaccurate.

 

[MarkyP]

So will any co2 tank do the job and it's perfectly safe to use non food grade co2?

How much headspace is left in a corny keg when it has 5 gallons of beer in it. if I can't get my hands on a tank I'm going to use the cartridges to purge hopefully It only takes 1 or 2 cartridges to purge but would anyone have a rough idea how many it would take.

I will do another search online and remove the words food grade co2 to regular co2. Cheers

 

[BigFloyd]

So will any co2 tank do the job and it's perfectly safe to use non food grade co2?

I suspect that the great majority of keggers are using tanks and gas that are not certified as "food grade".

 

[IL1kebeer]

I suspect that the great majority of keggers are using tanks and gas that are not certified as "food grade".

+1 Yup. My gas is paintball grade

 

[crawforc3]

It sounds like bottling would be better for your situation. Kegging is great, but it should be a luxury and not a burden.

 

[ResumeMan]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that most brewers using CO2 cylinders are getting them filled at your basic welding shop. I don't think it's food grade per se. Is that harmful? Er...I don't know, but lots of us have been doing it that way for a long time...

To be a bit more specific on your questions: You can absolutely sugar-prime your kegs to carbonate them. As stated upthread you can use a bit less sugar. Dispensing using your little canisters should work ok once the beer is carbonated, but trying to carbonate a beer using those things is just pissing money away.

But ultimately -- you should be able to get the products you need to safely keg/force-carb beer in Ireland as easily as you can in the US.

 

[Euphist]

When I exchange my 20# cylinder at AirGas, they don't ask whether I want food grade or not, but the small sticker on the tank says that it's food grade. My assumption is that it is cheaper for them to make it all the same rather than produce and store two different grades of gas. Since AirGas supplies many of the welding shops and paintball shops, I would suspect that the CO2 they are getting is food grade.

Please keep in mind that everything after the first sentence is purely my opinion.

Now whether any of this holds water on your side of the pond is entirely another story...

Perhaps something like this would give you peace of mind.

 

[MarkyP]

Hey guys thanks for all the feedback, I found another homebrew shop that's a good distance away from where I live and they sell a 5kg CO2 tank for homebrewing so I'm going to go ahead and purchase that along with a corny and worry about refilling when it needs be, I'm sure 5kg will last me a lot of brews.
I live in the capital dublin and there isn't a single homebrew shop in the entire county so driving a couple of hours to pick this up will be worth it when I get to pour my first pint of homebrew.

 

[fuzzy2133]

Ask your local gas supply shop. The shop I use only has 1 massive CO2 tank to fill from and the only difference is if you want to pay more for a certificate showing the CO2 is safe to use in Food/drink or medical. Otherwise they sell it as industrial.

 

[Black]

+1. CO2 fire extinguisher here. Been using for 8 + yrs. I'm not saying it's food grade or not.. I don't know. But as other posters stated, it would be stupid to hold 2 kinds of CO2 and very expensive.

I wonder what the difference is (if there is any) between food grade CO2 and "standard" CO2.. I mean, it's the same gas.


So I guess you could get an extinguisher (industrial one) that is pure CO2 and go with it. And it's easy to get refilled at safety equipment stores.


Cheers!