Carbonation questions...

[Willy Weizenbier]

Hi,

I'm moving to corny kegs and am not clear on a few points:

1) Once a beer (in this case, an ale) has been carbonated and is ready to drink, what PSI should I set it to while it's sitting in the kegerator ready for serving?

2) Are there ways to know the current amount of beer remaining in a keg? It'd be good to know when it's getting low so I know when to plan the next brew.

3) Has anyone had any success carbonating a Guinness clone with CO2, then serving with pure Nitro?

Cheers!

[Wazza_wantsbeer]

Hi @Willy Weizenbier,

I use SS corny kegs and a kegerator so to help:

1) I set my gas to 12 psi for all beverages, beer and seltzer (and this one time, some hop water).

2) The best way to get an accurate volume in your keg is to weight the keg empty, then weigh it full (you can use water for this), with those two you know the full volume of liquid by subtracting the weight of the empty keg from the full keg. Then, when you want to check, disconnect the keg in the kegerator, weigh it, and then subtract the empty keg weight from that weight to get the weight of the remaining beer.

Roughly, it's 1kg per litre o liquid that's mostly water.

Another less accurate way, when I want to get a rough idea, I just lift and lightly shake the keg and the rough weight as well the amount of sloshing will give you a rough idea of the remaining beer.

3) Haven't tried this but remember that to use nitro, you will need to use a specialty nitro tap.

You might find it easier to use a nitro tap connected directly to the keg as well as a bottle of nitrogen if you can find it. You can still keep it in your kegerator to keep it cold and just remove to pour.

I do this sometimes with my seltzers, I will use a sodastream bottle with mini-regulator and keep that at a higher PSI to get more fizz.

Good luck and let us know how you go.