Storing or Ageing in a keg

[lurker18]

I am going to be getting into kegging for the first time. Got a stout that will be kegged in a week or so, and will be served shortly after. My question is if I wanted to age or store a beer in a keg for the future, or to have one on hand ready to go at all times, what would be the best treatment for this. Should I prime and let the keg naturally carb up, force carb and then take off the system for ageing, let it store flat, basically letting it go for an extended secondary.
If it helps my system is cooled after the kegs, so they will be carbed and stored at room temperature, so there will be no cooling, carbing, and then warming up again.

[mookie1010]

I am going to be getting into kegging for the first time. Got a stout that will be kegged in a week or so, and will be served shortly after. My question is if I wanted to age or store a beer in a keg for the future, or to have one on hand ready to go at all times, what would be the best treatment for this. Should I prime and let the keg naturally carb up, force carb and then take off the system for ageing, let it store flat, basically letting it go for an extended secondary.
If it helps my system is cooled after the kegs, so they will be carbed and stored at room temperature, so there will be no cooling, carbing, and then warming up again.

I don't know about others here, but when I keg a beer I always have to apply some co2 to both seal the keg and eliminate oxygen from the headspace.

I have found that even when I force carb and take it off the gas, it still needs a day or two on the gas once I bring it out of storage to really be ready. I just put a chocolate stout on tap that had been force carbed about a month ago, but it took a day on the gas for it to pour with a decent head and carbonation.

I could be doing things wrong, but all of the beers I've done this way have tasted good after more than a month in storage.

[lurker18]

Thanks. I guess I mean having a keg good to go, I meant having it ready for the next day. I am new to kegging, but I don't assume that I can pressure it up, take it off the gas, and plug it back in a month or more later and it will be useable right away.
I am taking from this that if I prime or not, I need to purge the air (makes sence, needs to seal and remove any O2 in the headspace).

[LocalBrewer]

I agree with the purging. If I store a keg for some time I usually transfer to a keg, seal it up, hit it with about 20 psi of Co2, purge, hit it again, purge, and then it hit again. It is probably not nessary but I just want to make sure all the O2 is out. After that I throw the keg in the crawl space where it is between 55-60 and just let it sit until I am ready to hook it up.

[ajdelange]

I agree with the purging. If I store a keg for some time I usually transfer to a keg, seal it up, hit it with about 20 psi of Co2, purge, hit it again, purge, and then it hit again. It is probably not nessary but I just want to make sure all the O2 is out. After that I throw the keg in the crawl space where it is between 55-60 and just let it sit until I am ready to hook it up.

Let's think about this for a minute. You have 1 volume (the headspace volume) of air at 15 (to make the math easier) psia. You raise the pressure to 35 psia by forcing in CO2 at 20 + 15 = 35 psia. The mix in the headspace is now 15/35 = 40% air and 60% CO2. So you bleed back down to 1 atmosphere (15 psia). The mix is still 40% air. Repeat the process and the new mix will be 40% first mix (which is 40% air) and 60% CO2 or 0.4*0.4 = 16% air and 84% CO2. Do it a third time and you have 0.4*0.4*0.4 = 6.4% air which is 20% O2 so your headspace contains 1.3% O2. It certainly is necessary to do multiple purges and with a higher pressure. This is why many counterpressure fill into a keg which has been filled with water which has been pushed out with CO2.

[beerocracy]

This is why many counterpressure fill into a keg which has been filled with water which has been pushed out with CO2.

This is exactly how I sanitize my kegs. I completely fill with Star San then push it through a jumper into the next keg. I then run from the fermenter into the keg through the beer-out post. Now, if I could only remember every time to bleed the pressure off before running the beer from my conical into the keg. I don't know how many times I've hooked a keg up to the conical only to shoot a jet of high-pressure CO2 into the yeast cone.

[linuxelf]

I was under the impression that CO2 would be heavier, and would settle to the bottom, so when you bleed from the top you're removing more oxygenized air. Is this not the case?

[ajdelange]

Consider beer gas - a mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. If all the lighter Nitrogen went to the top and the CO3 stayed at the bottom then the cylinder would dispense beer gas but first nitrogen and then CO2. It is, of course, true that heavier gas can displace a lighter one but once they get mixed it is going to take a looooong time for them to separate.