If I conditioned a keg at room temperature for a couple of weeks and then cool to serving temp, what is the proper way to dispense? Do I vent the keg and then hook up CO2 to the proper dispensing pressure, or do I just tap and dispense until it needs more CO2?
First thing is to pull off a cloudy pint or two. Set the regulator to the estimated PSI to get to your goal.
Early, you can use a lower PSI, bit to keep up, max the PSI to your carb goal.
I used to transfer from conditioning keg to a serving keg. Save the loss of a pint or two, I just don’t see the benefit anymore.
Just to clarify: you naturally conditioned a keg (using sugar at room temperature) and now you want to put it on tap? Assuming the beer is carbonated as desired, just put it on at serving pressure. There’s no step two.
For future reference, you would ideally also put it on serving pressure during the cold crash. Otherwise it could pull a vacuum and be under-carbonated, or worse, draw air into the keg.
So long as the sugar has done its job, the only reason you need to set the psi is to push the beer out. I used to prime with sugar but if you have a leak or haven’t used enough sugar, you end up having to force carb. I used the sugar method last week on an imp brown stout and had a leak. Total waste of time. Now that I have my quick force carbing method locked in, I doubt I will use sugar ever again. Why wait 2 weeks when you can have what you want in 5 minutes!