by Trough Lolly » Friday Jul 20, 2007 4:02 pm
Hi Nathan,
There's a school of thought, that incidentally I agree with, that says that if you carbonate a keg after racking the beer from the fermenter, you tend to inhibit the yeast's ability to further improve and condition the beer in the keg. It's to do with osmotic pressures etc. Burping the keg to remove O2 from the headspace, before storing the kegged beer, is fine, but pushing in CO2 to carbonate the beer is not recommended unless you're going to serve that beer up.
You need to consider temperature when you gas beer. If you fill a keg with room temperature beer, you should chill the beer down before you gas the keg.
If you want to increase stocks, keg the beer, seal the keg, burp it a couple of times under about 5psi of pressure to force the O2 in the headspace out through the pressure relief valve and you'll substantially lower the chances of oxidising the beer. The burped (but not yet carbed) beer will happily stay in the keg for months. If you keep the ale at room temps, the yeast in solution will further condition the beer - and add small quantities of CO2 in the process, so the beer should further improve between racking and serving.
With good hygiene, your kegged beer should easily last in the keg for at least 3 or more months. I've tapped Stouts and strong ales that I've been kegging for 6+ months without any problems.
Cheers,
TL