Hello,
I’m a first-time keg user. I have a 5 gallon corny keg I’m looking to fill up with home brew cider. What is the stability or shelf life of said cider if I can’t refrigerate the corny keg? Must I refrigerate the keg?
Just one opinion here, others may disagree. I’ve had kegs at room temp for extended time without “major” issues, other than age. But I’ll say it’s better to keep it cold if you can. Warm is really not good, but room temp or basement temp should be ok, even for several months.
With that said, I keep many kegs in a freezer with a temp controller set to -1C (30.xF). This works wonders for clearing chill haze and cleaning up the beverage (beer/cider/whatever) flavor. Even using a fridge at say 3-5C (35-40F) which is pretty cold for a fridge, will take forever to drop out chill haze. Doesn’t mean the beverage is bad, but if you like that clarity, colder will get you there faster. In the past my cider has looked like it was filtered it was so clear.
Check on Craigslist for a used freezer of almost any size, and pick up an Inkbird controller from wherever you buy supplies (or Ebay I think has them too). Then you have the perfect situation, and it also doubles as a temp-controlled fermentation chamber which Imho, is the #1 best thing you can do for your brewing. Well, maybe #2 behind cleaning properly…
Warmer stales faster than colder, whether it’s kegs, bottles, or cans.
FWIW, I have a couple of kegs of cider sitting in my basement at cellar temperatures (55-62F) for the last 4-5 years and they have not gone off. Cider seems to be less prone to staling or infection than beer.
It’s not ideal but the keg will be ok for a while assuming you have good packaging practices. Cider will stale over time in the presence of oxygen and those reactions occur more quickly at warmer temperatures, so the best way to protect that cider is to reduce oxygen in the keg as much as possible. Flushing with CO2 would be a good idea. I would consider carbing with yeast rather than force carbed as another opportunity to reduce oxygen in the keg. If your timeline is under a year to drink it, I wouldn’t personally be too concerned unless you have really, really poor packaging practices.
You can also add campden (1-2 tabs per gallon, IIRC) as a preservative to minimize the staling effects of oxygen after packaging in the keg.