Kegging is a packaging choice. Instead of priming dozens of bottles, you transfer finished beer into a stainless Cornelius-style keg, apply carbon dioxide, and pour. The beer still needs to be finished — stable gravity — before it goes in. A keg is not a place to hide an unfinished ferment.
The heritage path was a shop category. Child SKUs 301 here. This body is a method.
The parts
- A keg that holds pressure and can be cleaned, with posts for gas in and beer out.
- Disconnects that match those posts. Ball-lock and pin-lock are not interchangeable without adapters. See pin-lock versus ball-lock.
- Food-grade tubing. Gas line and beer line are not a place for random garden hose.
- A CO₂ cylinder and a regulator you can read. Secure the cylinder so it cannot fall.
- A fridge, kegerator or keezer that fits the keg and keeps serving temperature stable.
You also need cleaner and sanitiser. A keg that sat with old beer in the lines will flavour the next pale ale whether you paid attention or not.
Transfer
Cold beer, a closed transfer if you can arrange one, and a sanitised keg that you have purged with CO₂ if you want less oxygen pickup. Siphoning into an open keg works; it is not the most oxygen-shy method. The moving to a keg essay is the narrative version of this paragraph.
Do not transfer because you are impatient. Transfer because gravity has held.
Carbonation
You can force-carbonate by setting a serving pressure and waiting, or by using a higher pressure for a shorter time and then reducing to serve. Charts exist in brewing references; this site will not invent a psi table for your beer style and fridge temperature. Start conservative. Over-carbonated beer is a mess, not a virtue.
If you want bottle-like carbonation without force gas, you can still prime a keg as if it were one large bottle. That is a hybrid some households use. Measure the priming addition as carefully as bulk priming requires.
Cleaning
Break the keg down. Clean the posts, dip tubes and o-rings. Replace worn o-rings rather than hoping. Run cleaner through lines, then sanitiser. The cleaning guide applies to stainless as much as to PET.
Safety
CO₂ is not oxygen. A leak in a small unventilated room is dangerous. Cylinders are high-pressure vessels. Treat them as such. This is ordinary industrial common sense, not a statistic.
Kegs under pressure can injure if a lid is mishandled. Depressurise before you open.
Law and health
Kegging does not change the legal status of the beer. It is still a personal ferment. It is still alcohol. The NHMRC 2020 guidelines do not care that the beer came out of a tap you built. A pint is still standard drinks.
Do not attach a still to a keg. That sentence should not be necessary, and yet the old catalogue sat kegs next to spirit gear.
Serving pressure and line length
Beer pours well when pressure, temperature and line resistance agree. If you get foam, the beer may be warm, the pressure high, or the line short. If you get a trickle, the opposite. Adjust one variable. This site will not invent a hose-length table that pretends to fit every fridge.
Picnic taps are convenient and sloppy. A proper tap on a cold collar is calmer. Both pour alcohol. Count drinks.
Cleaning day as a ritual
When a keg kicks, clean it the same day if you can. Dried beer in a dip tube is tomorrow’s pale-ale complaint. The cleaning guide is the method; this paragraph is the calendar.
Keep spare o-rings. A leaking lid is not a mysterious gas-law problem.
Sharing a tap
If guests pour, tell them it is home brew and it is alcohol. Offer water. The NHMRC 2020 guidelines do not have a keg exemption. A club using a tap should read the club essay.
Heritage children
SKUs, couplers and “other keg 19 litre” paths 301 here. You wanted a part. You get a process. The part is someone else’s shop now.