How to Keg and Force Carbonate Your Homebrew (2024)

FAQs

How to Keg and Force Carbonate Your Homebrew? ›

A more accelerated method of force carbonation involves putting 30-40 PSI of CO2 into your chilled keg of beer and shaking or rocking the keg to diffuse the gas at a faster rate. Depending on how cold your beer is, and how much you agitate the beer, you can have your beer carbonated anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days.

Force carbonating is adding carbonation to a liquid by pressurising the container it is in with CO2 for long enough that it absorbs into the liquid as bubbles. The colder the liquid, the higher the pressure and the more surface area is in contact between the liquid and the CO2 the faster the gas will absorb.

Place your keg in the refrigerator, connect your carbon dioxide source to the gas inlet of the keg, set the regulator to 13.5 psi and wait. A 5-gallon (19-L) keg of beer usually takes 5 to 7 days to equilibrate.

More Homebrewing

Carbonation occurs naturally in beer since yeast produce carbon dioxide along with alcohol when they eat sugar. Giving the yeast a specific amount of sugar just before bottling produces exactly the amount of carbonation needed. The amount of carbonation you get depends on the amount of sugar you add.

Homebrewers need to rack their beer into Cornelius kegs, then cool the beer to an appropriate cold temperature — the rule of thumb when carbonating is that colder is better (as cold as 28–32 ºF or around 0 ºC). The low temperatures promote CO₂ absorption.

Attach your just-filled keg to the CO2 source at a very high pressure – somewhere around 30-40 PSI. Shake, rattle and roll that keg to help dissolve the CO2 into the beer, and leave it attached to the high pressure for 12-24 hours in the fridge.

Forgetting to add priming sugar and not getting a good seal with the bottle cap or keg lid can be another reason for lack of carbonation. The easiest solution to these problems is to dose each bottle with additional sugar.

A more accelerated method of force carbonation involves putting 30-40 PSI of CO2 into your chilled keg of beer and shaking or rocking the keg to diffuse the gas at a faster rate. Depending on how cold your beer is, and how much you agitate the beer, you can have your beer carbonated anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days.

Typically this consists of chilling your beer down to the desired serving temperature, commonly 2^oC and setting your regulator at around 9-11psi which will carbonate a beer around the 2.4 to 2.5 CO₂ volume mark over the course of 5-8 days.

Why is my beer not carbonated in the keg? ›

Flat beer in a keg is usually due to the keg being under gassed or the keg having a gas leak. Before you gas the keg a second time you will need to check the keg for leaks. To do this you need to set your regulator to 40 psi (280kpa) and pump gas into the keg for about 5 minutes. This will be enough to test the keg.

The two most common issues resulting in flat beer are: Not giving the beer enough time in the bottles (we suggest a minimum of 2 weeks) or not using enough pricing sugar in your beer.

Adding Simple Sugars To Increase ABV

Simple sugars are another great option to boost ABV. One pound of sugar adds approximately 1.009 specific gravity points per 5 gallons.

The Second method we will refer to as the “fast” forced carbonation method. Using either of these methods you need to ensure that the beer that you are force carbonating is cold when forcing the CO2 in. Cold beer accepts and holds the CO2 much better than warm or room temperature beer.

Set and Forget

Typically, you'll hook up your co2 to the keg, set the regulator at serving pressure, between 8–12 psi, and let it slowly carbonate over the course of 2 weeks or so.

cold gasses are much more dense than warmer gasses). Modern beers are often carbonated in the 2.0–2.5 volumes CO₂ range. So to carbonate a beer to 2.4 volumes of CO₂, you need to set your regulated pressure to 11 psi at 40 °F (4 °C), but need to crank it up to 27 psi to get the same carbonation level at 65 °F (18 °C).

A more accelerated method of force carbonation involves putting 30-40 PSI of CO2 into your chilled keg of beer and shaking or rocking the keg to diffuse the gas at a faster rate. Depending on how cold your beer is, and how much you agitate the beer, you can have your beer carbonated anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days.

In order to produce this gas, the beverage needs enough sugar – either left over after the first fermentation or added – to produce the bubbly fizz we love. Adding a teaspoon of sugar, fruit juice, or slices of fruit can aid in the carbonation process.