Kegging and Bottling Equipment

Whether you choose to keg or bottle, you’ll need sanitizing solution. I like to make about a gallon’s worth and I also keep some handy in a spray bottle. I mix and store it in the same 12 quart container I used on brew day.

You will also need a specialized piece of equipment called an auto-siphon, which will enable the safe transfer of beer from your carboy to your keg or bottles by reducing the chance of oxygen coming into contact with your beer. Oxygen is the enemy at this stage in the game - it will turn your beer into something that looks and tastes like wet cardboard.

An auto-siphon is made up of two individual parts - a plastic smaller plastic cylinder that slides in and out of a larger plastic cylinder. We’ll also need a 3-4’ section of 5/16” outer diameter tubing as an ‘outlet’ for the beer leaving the auto-siphon.

I like these 1.5 gallon mini kegs because I can stack two of them in my mini-fridge. I have seen slightly smaller one gallon kegs but they didn’t fit as well in my space despite having a smaller footprint. I also much prefer the way that tops are designed on these 1.5 gallon kegs with the placement of the in and out hookups. Speaking of in and out hookups, on kegs you will find two different types - ball lock and pin lock. Either style is fine, just know that the two types are not compatible so if you buy a keg with ball lock connectors, which I have here, then make sure your in and out hoses have ball lock fittings.

Also pictured here is a small tube of keg lube which you’ll want to use on the o-ring on the keg’s lid and occasionally on the keg’s o-rings. This will help seal and protect the o-rings.

For the critical step of dispensing beer from the keg, I’ve got a draft line with a ball lock attachment on one end and a standard black plastic beer server at the other end.

While you can naturally carbonate beer in a keg using priming sugar, I’d much rather force carbonate with CO2. You’ll need CO2 to dispense the beer anyway so why bother with priming sugar - save that for bottling.

This is a 5 lb CO2 canister. You’ll want to do some research before buying a brand new one. Some places might not fill up empty CO2 tanks - they only swap empties for full, meaning you will leave with a different tank than you brought in. Doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of cash on new tank if that’s the case. I’ve heard of some sporting goods stores that will fill tanks as paintball guns use CO2. My local homebrew store sells full tanks and will fill swap an empty tank with one that’s full for a nominal fee.

It’s called a 5 lb tank because that’s how much compressed CO2 it contains. On the outside of the tank towards the top will be a bunch of printed letters and numbers - the tank’s tare (empty) weight will be listed on there. Mine reads “TW 7.66”, meaning my tank weighs 7.66 lbs when empty. With 5 lbs of CO2 inside, my tank weighs 12.66 lbs when full. I highly recommend weighing your tank before you keg anything. If I see my tank getting close to its tare weight, then I know its time to exchange it for a full one.

In order to control the flow of CO2 coming out of the tank, you’ll need to get a regulator. The one pictured here is a dual regulator that will allow you to connect two kegs to the CO2 tank and independently control the flow of CO2 into each tank. This is desirable if I have two different beers in kegs that benefit from two different PSI settings for serving. For example, a Kolsch will typically benefit from a higher serving PSI than a Stout or Porter. A dual regulator will cost a little more than a single regulator, but I knew I wanted more than one beer on tap at any given time. You could also get a single regulator with a splitter, just know that both kegs would have to be set to the same PSI.

You’ll also need to get a gas line (or two in this case) to transfer the gas from the regulator. The gas lines I bought had the ball lock fittings already installed - these fittings will connect the gas line to the keg. The gas lines hook up to the barb fittings on the tips of the regulator.

This is what the regulator looks like when connected to the CO2 tank. The nut on the end of this particular regulator is over an inch wide so I had to get an adjustable wrench big enough to handle that. I also needed a flathead screwdriver in order to tighten the collar that secures the gas line to the barb fittings on my regulator.

That’s pretty much all you’ll need for kegging. Before you buy anything, I’d recommend taking some measurements of whatever equipment you plan on purchasing along with the ‘fridge you’re going to store this all in just to ensure that everything will fit. I’ve got a 4 cubic foot mini-fridge that will hold two 1.5 gallon kegs, a 5 lb CO2 with a dual regulator with just enough room to spare for a few four-packs and bottles from my favorite breweries.

As mentioned at the top of this post, we will need sanitizing solution, a bucket, an auto-siphon and a 3-4’ section of 5/16” outer diameter tubing to connect to the ‘outlet’ of the auto-siphon.

We also need one extra piece of gear - a bottling wand (pictured on the right) - to attach to the other end of the tubing . The bottling wand will be used to fill the individual bottles. It has a little plastic tip at the end of it - when pressure is applied to this tip, the wand ‘opens’ and beer will flow through it. To stop the flow of beer simply lift up the wand to remove the pressure from the tip and the wand closes, allowing it to be moved to the next beer bottle without spilling any beer.

The beer that you bottle right out of the carboy will be flat so we will need to carbonate it before drinking it. For our purposes there are two ways to do this.

One method involves using priming sugar - in this case, dextrose (aka corn sugar). The other method involves using carbonation drops. Both have their pros and cons - follow this link to read more about the methods.

We can’t bottle beer without having some bottles on hand. You can definitely buy new bottles from a homebrewing store but it’s more fun to save bottles from beers that you’ve previously enjoyed. We’ll also need caps - those should be purchased new as bottle caps shouldn’t be reused. Lastly, you’ll need a bottle capper.