I recently tapped my first natural carbed keg. I used 3 oz sugar to 5 gallons of beer. It sat 6 weeks in my 68 degree man cave. First off it was over carbonated so I pulled on the relief valve and let it repressurize to my serving pressure. Now it pours good. But the head dissipates too quickly and there is no lacing. It tastes good and it tastes fully carbonated. All in all I think I will stick with force carbonating.
I’ve also noticed when priming a keg vs force carbing the head formation/retention is lacking. Anyone have any ideas on why this might be?
You would think it would be the same as bottle carbonation since it’s the same process. Curious to see what answers you get.
This is what I thought too. It was nice putting my keg in the fridge and having it ready to serve the next day. I don’t get what is happening to the head retention though.
I think it is just coincidence and would look elsewhere for the head retention issue.
I am going to be kegging a wheat beer next. I will try natural priming again. If I run into the same thing with a wheat beer then I will know it is something to do with natural priming.
You might want to look through this to see if there’s anything there that might account for it.
http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/35-head-retention/697-getting-good-beer-foam-techniques
Cool article, thanks Denny
I naturally carb my kegs. I use beer smith and it advises me to use 1.96 oz corn sugar to achieve 2.3 volumes. I haven’t had any over carbing going that way.
I have noticed with my wheat beers that they tend to have a sulfur smell I’m not sure why, but I suspect that it has something to do with the yeast being in suspension. A quick fix that has worked for me is to purge the keg a couple of times before I pour my first glass and that seems to do the trick.
After pouring a few glasses from this keg I am getting better head retention which makes me wonder if the first few glasses are trub glasses. I am still getting too much foam when pouring though. I have purged the keg once I will try purging it again.
Thankyou for the article Denny.
A little late to the party but did you try using a freshly cleaned glass? It’s possible the first glass you used just wasn’t very clean and killed the head if everything else tastes great!
All of my glasses are clean. And if it was the glass that would account for the lacing but not the quick loss of foam. I think the problem was I was getting trub the first few glasses.