Of kegs and overpressure infusion...

Cream Ale sitting under 30psi in the fridge

Kegging brew is a whole new animal. It's totally dissimilar from bottling with one exception, everything still has to be uber sterile. Other than that though - there's no bottle conditioning and your brew can be ready to serve within just a couple of hours. It's significantly more consistent than bottle conditioning as you can directly control the carbonation of the beverage and to some extent the head and head retention of your brew at the time it comes out of the tap. On that note - you tap it, how awesome is actually pouring your homebrew from a tap? Not to mention that you can now transport and serve your entire 5 Gallon batch with only a few parts instead of 64 individual bottles, and I for one find that quite excellent!

After sanitizing your keg - standard 5 gallon StarSan solution directly into the keg add some pressure (10psi) slosh it a round a little, then dispense the solution through the draft lines (sanitizing the lines) and empty the keg - simply rack your brew into the keg! Now, you want to force carbonate it right? This is a simple process also; in general add 30 psi pressure and let the keg sit in the fridge for a day or two (CO2 still hooked up and at 30psi). Doing this creates a pressure differential and allows the CO2 to dissolve into the beer, carbonating it. Now disconnect the CO2, release the excess pressure, reconnect the CO2 and dial up 10psi (drafting px) and the tapping lines and it's ready to serve!

Now, there are of course ways to fine tune/tailor this to specific beer styles - this is homebrewing after all, if you can't tinker then what's the point?! To do this you will have to reference a chart that lists the pressure required to dissolve the desired amount of CO2 into solution, and then you have to know how much carbonation you'll actually want. Mr. Papazian provides both of these in his book so that would be a good place to start!

I have already kegged four brews - one five gallon batch (an Irish Red Ale) was run dry in a matter of minutes by my friends!

Let it flow, let it flow,
Jack