I’d advise chilling your beer, putting 12 psi on one keg and shaking it a ton. Then doing the same to the other keg, and leave the gas on it for the night. Do it every day for a week leaving the gas on alternating kegs, and I guarantee they’ll both be carbed.
You can’t do 12 psi and then take the gas off, you won’t get enough in solution. Leaving it hooked up is the way to go, but 3-4 days or even a week of constantly being connected is not going to carb it well enough either. Over pressurizing and shaking is likely to get you two overcarbonated kegs.
I recently carbed a keg in less than 36 hours by chilling and shaking at serving pressure.
Somewhat related question to the above: I moved a lager into the keg this weekend. It was at 60F when I transferred it. I sealed it up and put it on the gas at 10 PSI for about 36 hours while it chilled to 38F to make sure it was sealed. If I take it off the gas for a couple of days will it stay sealed and keep the air out of the keg? I’m not worried about having it properly carbed at this point.
Have had to do it in less for a party. Chilled from crash cooling, racked to keg. I put a bar stool in front of the fridge (CO2 bottle is outside the fridge) and I hook up a 6 foot line with 30 psi on it… Put the keg in your lap and rockabye baby for about a half hour. Another 12 hours in the fridge at 30 psi and we were off to the races. Hey, it was a party, not a judging session. ;D
I would take a sample after the 36 hours and see if it’s adequately carbed. If not, then charge it again. It’s supposed to take a week to carb at refrigerator temp, but I’m not specific on whether you need to leave the CO2 on it, or if you can just charge it one time and wait. My guess though is that you need to charge quite a few times due to CO2 absorption…I’m taking tschmidlin’s advice above and alternating the carbonation on two kegs every 24 hours.
I’m curious to know whether your beer carbed after 36 hours…I’m going to check my beers on Friday…boy I hope they’re carbed :
Mine was perfectly carbed after 36 hours. You can do it oscarvan’s way and over pressurize it to carb it faster, but I’ve ended up with too many over carbonated beers that way and it’s just annoying to have to take out CO2 so I don’t do it any more. That’s why I prefer chilling and carbing at serving temperature, and shaking it to speed things up if I need to. But you’ll figure out a way that works for you, these are just ideas.
