I also just caved in and purchased a kegging system. I think I like the taste of bottle conditioned beer better but you just can’t beat the ease and convenience of a session beer right from the tap! I’ll be watching the posts to your request and we can learn together. Tallguy was giving me tips at the group brew yesterday.

Congrat’s!

Bill

Depending on the brew, you can go straight from primary to keg. This usually works for lower gravity brews that don't need too much clarity, such as wheat beers. This step can also work if you're making a lager. Transfer your lager to the keg, and then let it stay cold for several weeks. Any remaining yeast will drop out of suspension and fall to the bottom of the keg.

Different styles of beer require different levels of carbonation, pilsners are more bubbly than ESBs, etc. I don't know anybody who that naturally carbonates in the keg. Most everyone uses forced carbonation, typically 30psi for 24-36 hours. Serve at 5-10psi depending on the length of your serving lines.

Tell Stan to watch out for freon lines that run through the walls of the fridge. If he hits one, your project will come to crashing halt.

Cheers!

BT

Happy Birthday. I did not know 'company' people had birthdays. 1) I have heard you can secondary in the keg but I have enough carboys that I do that in glass. Secondary should not create that much CO2 and you want some in the keg to make sure no O2 gets to the beer. 2) Tips. Make sure you purge the keg with some gas before you transfer. Easy as hooking up the gas to the in post and let it flow for a few seconds. CO2 will settle so even if you do not fill the keg all the way it will help keep the air off. Make sure you know if the kegs have had the rubber o-rings replaced. They can have soda flavor stuck in them and some say the flavor can leach out to the beer. New o-rings are inexpensive enough to replace and is good insurance from that and leaks. Also if you still want to bottle some of a brew you can either bucket prime, bottle what you want, and keg the rest. Or you can keg and bottle from the keg before force carbing and figure out how to prime each bottle. Or just bottle from a carbed up keg with a wand. That is a subject all its own so if you want to cover that in a separate email that may be best. 2) I force carb as I am always in a hurry. I just turn up the regulator as far at it will go and shake the keg upside down until the gas stops flowing. That way the gas bubbles through the beer. Let it set cold for a few days and pull the little gas release in the lid. Then set the regulator to serving pressure and drink away. Cold beer carbs faster then warm beer if you are in a hurry. You can prime with sugar but like I said I am in a hurry and never have so can not help with the pros or cons of that. 3) If you are having the taps in the door there are no coils to worry about so drill where ever you like. The plastic on the inside of the door can rarely give trouble. If it cracks just get some decorative brass or aluminum plate and silicone it to the inside to cover the crack. Welcome to the world of kegging.

Let me just start by saying I love kegging my beer, it is so much easier and such a time saving step. I almost always rack my secondary into a carboy but have been known to be anxious and skip straight to keg from primary, depends how long it is in primary and the FG for me. I have done both force carbonate and add priming sugar. In my opinion the mouth feel of the carbonation was better with the primed kegs. The bubbles feel smaller, the cost is very low, many breweries use this technique using wort. However you end up with a larger yeast plug on the bottom which comes out in the first glass if tapped early enough, and you have to wait longer to drink it. I have force carbonated a keg in the morning and started drinking it later that evening, and in another instance I didn't tap it for many months and in my opinion the carbonation was much more like the primed kegs. You have to decide what you want and don't take my word for it try it out when you have 10 gallons of the same beer.

When priming with sugar I use 1/2 cup or less depending on FG/residual sugar, style of beer, type of sugar I'm priming with etc...

When it comes to the kegerator, I actually have mounted the taps inside of the fridge before and this worked great( little more clean up required with in the fridge). With another fridge I put them thru the door and then mounted the hoses to the wall to keep them out of the way( clean up is off the floor or in a overflow bucket). Definitely drill slowly so you don't hit the coolant lines if you go thru the side or top.

Have Fun

Matt