Wedding beer stockpile

[aschettler]

I'm getting married in October and I've started making beer for it this month. I'm ready to keg 2 batches and free up some carboys(btw this will be my first kegging attempt).
Everyone talks about carbing it than surving it immediately but is there anything I should be thinking about if I want to store it for months?

I imagine myself gassing the 2 batches this weekend by following pressure/temp chart in "Brewing Classic Styles" and keeping the gas on for 2-3 days, at which time it should be properly carbonated (does that sound reasonable?). At that point can I just take the gas off, keeping the keg under pressure, and store it in the closet until October?

Would it be better to store it un-carbonated until it got closer to party time?

Keep in mind that I'm not concerned with style appopriate carbonation levels, I'm not entering any competitions, I'm just getting my family and friends drunk. If its got carbonation and its not all foam it'll be a success.

 

[Worticia]

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding!

I conferred with my HWMO (CO2 extraordinaire) and he suggested that you need to carb it enough to reach equilibrium at 12 PSI. Doesn't matter how you get there. Your can use 40 PSI for a couple of days, then shut off and check after 24 hours. Once it stays overnight at that pressure, then you are good. Lower pressure may take longer.

Good luck!

 

[aschettler]

Thanks for the help!

 

[Felixio]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/keg-force-carbing-methods-illustrated-73328/

This thread explains two different ways of force carbing your beer. Since you don't seem to need it right away, and assuming that you have enough CO2 lines to let this sit for a little while without interfering, then you could just set your regulator to 12psi (or whatever your desired pressure would be) and let it sit for three weeks.

 

[terrapinj]

be careful racking so you don't introduce any oxygen

may be a good idea to fill the keg with co2 before you start racking beer into it

make sure you purge the keg a few times after filling it before sealing the lid and starting to carb it
- fill with co2 and pull the pressure relief valve (if ball lock) and repeat a few times

 

[zachattack]

It'll take 2-3 weeks to carbonate using the "set it and forget it" method, not 2-3 days. I'd suggest you drink at least one batch before the wedding to troubleshoot your carbonating/serving process. You don't want to wait until your wedding day to discover that your lines are unbalanced, one of the dip tubes is screwed up, an o-ring is compromised, your faucet is broken, etc.

 

[aschettler]

be careful racking so you don't introduce any oxygen

may be a good idea to fill the keg with co2 before you start racking beer into it

make sure you purge the keg a few times after filling it before sealing the lid and starting to carb it
- fill with co2 and pull the pressure relief valve (if ball lock) and repeat a few times

Thanks for the advice.
I did watch to make sure the transfer went smooth and I made sure the head space was oxygen free. That pressurize than purge thing happens naturally if you push your sanitizer out of the keg with co2. CO2, being heavier than air, will fill up the keg and stay there even with lid off until its either pushed out by the beer or if the keg gets tiped over and it "pours" out. It probably not a bad practice but I don't have a pressure relief valve on my keg lid so I couldn't do it.

 

[samuryan]

I would naturally carb in your kegs (sugar prime). Your kegs will be sitting anyway, plenty of time to properly condition, and you can easily adjust carb levels with gas day before wedding. Doing a test run is sound advice.

 

[aschettler]

I would naturally carb in your kegs (sugar prime). Your kegs will be sitting anyway, plenty of time to properly condition, and you can easily adjust carb levels with gas day before wedding.

Is there a benifit to natural carbing over forced? I've got the bottle and the gas on hand so it seems to me like a wash whether I do it one way or the other.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help me out.

 

[peaktopview]

natural carbing is nice when you don't have space to chill a keg while force carbing, or if you have a pipleline built up, it doesn't waste co2. the downside is that like a bottle conditioned beer, there is a lot more sediment/yeast at the bottom of the keg, so your first pour or two are dumpers.

I have force carbed kegs before (chilled) and warmed them back up to cellar so that they would be ready to go when i felt like bringing them up, just needed to chill them for a day or two for service.

keep in mind that if you naturally carb, its like a big beer bottle, you might need to chill it for a while (others might know for how long) to let the beer carb up (equalize pressure in the headspace). i haven't done a whole lot of natural carbing so someone else might weigh in on that.

whatever you do, i recommend having at least one empty keg which you can transfer your beer into for traveling, there will be some trub at the bottom that would get stirred up traveling. so before you travel, transfer your beer over into the clean keg leaving the trub behind in the old keg. i have a small section of beer tube with two beer out qd's, hook up to the beer outs of both kegs and push with a low psi of co2 (make sure to release pressure in the full keg first). here is info on that . if you have multiple beers, you can clean the dirty keg and continue until you have all the beers moved over. this keeps the beer clear for serving.

congrats,

b