I’ve got a homebrew competition on 14 May but wanted to tap into the five-gallon keg of my Big, Black, and Burley Stout this Friday with some friends. The carbonation is rougly 15-psi after a couple weeks on my corn sugar mixture and I can always add CO2 to keep the beer at 12-psi and it will never come into contact with oxygen. But seeing that I would like some validation, does anone know why I should not crack into the beer Friday seeing that I will be putting it into a competion on May 14th and will never be touched by oxygen? I figure the biggest threat to this beer is me drinking it before the event, huh?
the only thing I can think of is that as you drink it down the surface to volume changes in the keg…so fluctuation in carbonation is possible…beer does change over time, too. Also, if you disconnect your serving hose and make sure it stays clean…I would personally go for it. You have to taste it to make sure it is good enough for competition, right?
I was thinking it would be fine… I’ll just make sure to remove the cobra tap (as you mentioned) and keep the keg at 12-psi on the CO2 cylinder. And yeah, I better taste test it to ensure it’s competition worthy, huh?
Why not put some into bottles before the get-together and let them finish carbonating in the bottles? You could bottle a couple extra and test one out just before the competition deadline.