Learn to Keg
When considering the individual steps, kegging your homebrew is no more complicated or difficult than bottling. In fact, I find kegging to be a lot easier than bottling. I can keg a beer much faster than I can bottle a similar sized batch. Sure, a keg has more parts to clean than a bottle but I find it much easier to properly clean and sanitize all of these parts rather individual bottles. With only one vessel to fill, there’s less of chance to introduce oxygen - when you bottle, you typically need to transfer beer to a bottling bucket before transferring to bottles. When you keg, you can naturally carbonate your beer just like you would when you bottle or if you attach the keg to a CO2 tank with a regulator you can speed up the process by force carbonating your beer so that you can enjoy it with a few days of kegging. Bottles will typically require two weeks to properly carbonate.
When I started homebrewing, like many others before me I began by bottling my finished beer. I turned to kegging almost exclusively after running into problems with bottling New England style IPAs. Somehow during transfer into bottles, I had introduced too much oxygen causing the beers to oxidize, turning the beer into a dark brown color and rendering it undrinkable. I haven’t had any issues with oxidation since I began kegging - with a CO2 and regulator I can purge most of the oxygen from the keg so it never has a chance to foul my beer.
Prior to kegging, please review the kegging equipment page for a full list of everything you’ll need to support you on kegging day.
Begin by making sanitizing solution - mix together 0.2 oz of Star San and one gallon of water in a large container. It’s very important to make sure that anything coming into contact with finished beer is clean and sanitized as we want to keep unwanted bacteria out of our finished beer.
Connect your tubing to the open-end of your auto-siphon and then place the auto-siphon into the solution.
Remove the keg’s lid put the open end of the tube into the keg.
With the keg’s lid removed, take some of the keg lube and smear it on the lid’s o-ring. You don’t need to use too much, just enough to give it a light coating. The keg lube will help ensure a nice tight seal when you close the keg’s lid.
We need to sanitize the inside of the keg before it can fill it with beer. Use the auto-siphon to fill the keg with a few cups of sanitizing solution. By using the auto-siphon to fill the keg, we’re also sanitizing the inside of it, which is also very important as we will be using it to transfer our beer from the carboy to the keg.
Once filled with sanitizing solution, attach the keg’s lid and hold the keg upside down over the sink to make sure there are no leaks. Move the keg around in all directions for 60 seconds - the goal is to ensure that every surface inside of the keg makes contact with the sanitizing solution.
Once this step is complete, both the inside of the keg and auto-siphon are sanitized. Keep the keg sealed with the solution inside until you are ready to fill it with beer. Place the tubing back into the sanitizing solution for use later.
Note: if this is your first time using an auto-siphon, I recommend using this step as an opportunity to practice using it before you start transferring beer.
Check it out this video below for a quick demonstration:
Seems like magic trick, right?
This is how I like to set up for transferring. Note the keg in the sink with the lid removed - the sanitizing solution that was in the keg has been poured back into the bucket. Make sure you drop the keg’s lid into the sanitizing solution.
I like the keg to be lower than the vessel that contains the beer - that way I’m not fighting against gravity when transferring. Also note that I’ve got a spray bottle filled with sanitizing solution behind the carboy.
We’ve previously sanitized the inside of the auto-siphon - now we need to make sure the outside of it is also sanitized. Make sure all outer surfaces of the auto-siphon come into contact with the sanitizing solution in the bucket.
To start the transfer process, take the end of the tubing and place it into the keg. At this point in the beer making journey, oxygen is the enemy as it will cause your beer to pick up off-flavors an colors. To avoid introduction of unwanted oxygen you want to transfer the beer ‘quietly’ with a minimum amount of splashing and bubbling. To do this, make sure that the end of the tube actually touches the bottom the keg.
Remove the airlock and cap from the carboy and place the other end of the auto-siphon into it. You’ll notice a layer of yeast and sediment at the bottom of the carboy - you definitely don’t want that in your keg so the bottom of the auto-siphon only needs to go down into the carboy as far as the beer goes.
Siphon the beer from the carboy into the keg. Once the beer is flowing from the carboy into the keg via the tubing, I like to lift the carboy up with one hand and tilt it 45 degrees. I use my other hand to control where the end of the siphon goes while it’s inside of the carboy, making sure to only siphon the beer and not the yeast and sediment (aka trub) that’s sitting in the bottom of the carboy.
As soon as you are done siphoning, remove the tube from the keg and immediately close up the keg using the lid that’s been soaking in the sanitizing solution.
Your carboy should something like this when you’re done siphoning. Only the beer has been transferred - I’ve left the yeast and sediment behind. Also note the two muslin bags - this particular beer is a NEIPA that I dry-hopped in the carboy. I’ll have to fish those out and then clean this carboy thoroughly.
With the keg filled with beer and closed up, now we’ve got to purge the oxygen from it. As this is a 1.5 gallon keg that’s only filled with one gallon of beer, there’s going to be a lot of ‘headspace’ in the keg that is currently filled with oxygen just waiting to ruin your beer.
Connect the regulator to the CO2 tank. Using the black knob on the CO2 tank, open up the gas all the way. We will use a relatively high psi to purge the air from the keg - using the red knob on the regulator, turn it until the gas read-out dial says 30 psi. Turn the valve lever down so that it is parallel with the hose. The gas is now on and set to the correct psi to purge the keg.
Connect the gray end of the gas line to the “in” port on the keg. Congrats, you’ve now got CO2 flowing into your keg.
The lid of the keg has a pressure relief valve (PRV) - that’s the greyish plastic piece with a metal ring. Pull up slowly on the metal ring - you’ll hear a loud hissing noise. This is the sound of gas coming out of the keg. Do this for a few seconds then wait 10 seconds and repeat the process twice. Essentially, you are using CO2 from the tank to force out all of the oxygen in the keg.
This high pressure purge also will fully ‘seat’ the lid in place to form a nice air-tight seal.
Once you’re done purging the oxygen out of the keg, turn the red knob back down to zero, flip the lever so it is parallel to the ground, turn off the CO2 tank and disconnect the gray gas line.
At this point, I get everything ready to store in my mini-fridge until the beer is ready to serve. Your beer will absorb CO2 faster if it is cold and you will also need to chill your beer before you serve it.
Repeat the process above for turning on the gas, only this time set the pressure to 15 psi. Connect the gray end of the gas line to the “in” port on the keg. There’s no need to use the PRV on the keg this time as now we want to keep all of the CO2 in the keg so that the beer can absorb the gas - this is what will produce the bubbles in your beer and its foamy head. This process is called force-carbonation. I find that one gallon of beer, chilled to about 35 degrees F will be ready to drink within about three days.
Note: on this day I had a second beer to keg. The nice thing about have a double-regulator is that I can carbonate two beers at the same time and at two different pressures if need be. In addition to the NEIPA, I’ve also kegged a Porter which will be served at a lower pressure than the NEIPA.
One of the best parts about brewing beer in small batches that I can fit both of these kegs, the regulator and the CO2 tank into my mini-fridge and still have room for a few 4 packs from my favorite local brewery.