I was hoping some folks could help me with a kegging question. I am new to kegging, and just purchased two 3 gallon kegs to put into an Igloo cooler for a mobile kegerator. I will not be getting a full CO2 setup yet. For now, I plan on keg conditioning and dispensing with a paintball tank for mobility reasons. I need some sort of way of calculating how much DME to use to carbonate the beer inside the keg, factoring in only 3 gallons. I will use corn sugar for some recipes and I have a good calculator for that, but I can't find any calculator that factors in that I am keg conditioning and NOT bottling and tells me how much DME to use. Thank you!
http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/ Bottle and keg conditioning should be the same. Each individual bottle should carbonate at the same speed as a keg as long as everything is mixed well. Hope it helps
Thanks for the link. That would make it simple, but I keep hearing that when you're keg conditioning (at least with corn sugar) you have to scale back the sugar as compared to bottling. Isn't that true?
I always force carbonate my kegs, so I'm not 100% sure, but as far as I know it's the same. Maybe someone else with more experience knows different though.
I would scale back to 60% if using Dextrose. So 3 oz. per 5 gallons. You can try the same % with the DME, but why not use dextrose? It works great and your're not changing your beer. Brian
You can also use the calculator on this site http://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ If you read all the notes on the bottom of the page, Larry explains how the calculator works. Looks like you would need 2.7oz of DME fin 3 gallons for average carbonation.
