My dad just called me from one of his customer's meat plants in Iowa with a question. The guy makes his own whisky but gave brewing a shot recently. He then put the beer into a corny keg & added sugar to carbonate in there, basically just taking a guess and not actually knowing if it would work. Now he wants to get it out and is wondering what to do. Here's what I thought and told him I would check in with the club to see if anyone has heard of a similar situation:
- he bascially made one large bottle of beer in a keg b/c the sugar has been helping it ferment. if he were to open that up he's screwed.
- My thought was to hook the beer up to co2 at a very minimal level, just enough to help the beer get out of the keg but not enough to add carbonation to it.
Does this sound plausible? Any other recommendations?
Thanks for all the tips guys. I talked with him & got it figured out. He is just trying to get the beer out and it's under carbed from the sugar. apparently he makes wine a lot & uses argon gas so he tried that. that was enough to force the beer out but it doesn't add anything to the carbonation. He's going to try co2 at a low setting and purge and recarb if neccessary.
Are you saying that the keg is over carbed? If this is the case he will need to slowly purge the keg through the popet valve (pressure release). If the keg is full...there will probably be some gushing through this valve. If he can figure out a way to slowly let air out...that works best. I've used a bit of metal from a hanger, through the valve hole, to just slightly hold the relief valve open.
If it's significantly over-carbed, it may take several purging cycles to get to the appropriate level of carbonation, but you get the idea.
Assuming he's serving out of the same keg he carbed in, he'll probably also want to pour off and discard the first half pint to pint of the keg to get rid of the small yeast cake that formed when the beer carbed. After chilling, of course.
-Adam
He just wants to serve it out of the keg. I'll give him those tips. Thanks Adam
What does he want to do? Serve it? Just get it out of the keg? If he wants to just get it out of the keg, what is he going to put it into?
If he wants to serve it, he should chill it, purge it, hook it up at his desired serving pressure for 24 hours or so, purge it again, wait another 24 hours, and then see if it's appropriately carbed. That's what I would do, anyway.
-Adam