While cleaning 60 kegs yesterday, I had a question. Do you store your kegs cleaned and sanitized under pressure ready for use or do you clean and sanitize for immediate filling?
I only have 3 kegs: 2 for the kegerator and 1 for cold conditioning. So most of the time the answer would be ‘yes.’ I usually end up cleaning 2, one for immediate filling and the other is ready for the next batch, cleaned, sanitized and under CO2 pressure.
I store my kegs cleaned and pressurized. If there’s no pressure when I go to use them, I know there’s a leak. I sanitize right before use.
+1. Same here.
That’s a great idea! I’ve been storing them clean, but w/ not pressure. Will now start storing w/ a little pressure after cleaning.
One thought, could you leave some star san solution (1gal?) in the keg and store w/ a little pressure. Then when you are ready to use it, just slosh around the star san, dump then transfer beer into the keg?
Cleaning kegs is such a PITA we have started taking them to another brewery to run them through their keg washer. We clean them in batches and they come back clean, sanitized, pressurized, and ready to fill. They sit like that until I fill them.
sure, but don’t dump. just force the star san out with co2 that way your mostly clear of o2 in the keg when you fill it. If I had more kegs than the 3 I currently own I would keep one filled with star san all the time and when I needed a keg I would transfer the star san to another empty keg and fill the one that had been full. this way it’s purged (no headspace + forced out with co2 = 0 o2). Then I would just need to figure out a good closed transfer from a bucket to a keg.
What I usuallly do is hook the keg up to the tap w/ a little pressure and pull the star san through the tap so that it sanitizes the line. This should also clear most of the o2 in the keg before I fill the keg w/ beer. I have 4 kegs, one for each tap, so I wasn’t storing any empty kegs. However, I recently acquired 4 more kegs. I’ve cleaned them and currently have them stored clean but w/ no pressure on them. I think when I clean the next keg, I’ll store w/ star san and pressure.
Eeesh, I have to clean 7 kegs this weekend. 
Clean, sanitized, pressurized, ready to fill.
The 60 are about a months worth of the brewery’s kegs. I have about 18 corney at home that need to be cleaned or got rid of.
We have to deal with a couple guys like you. Damn it! 
Sometimes we clean/sani/purge. Sometimes we clean/sani/purge/fill. Depends what’s going on. I much prefer the former.
Yeah, but we bring them ice cream (microcreamery and brewery) so they love to clean our kegs for us. ;D
OK, I wish I had to deal with guys like you!!!
If you want I can mail you some ice cream . . .
Can you email me some?
I’ll just put this here and you can help yourself.
Not cool, Tom… The best I can get is from the grocery store. :-\
Outstanding!
A friend of mine who flies out to Seattle for business regularly said that ice cream is rockin’. I told him next time see if he can meet the brewer.