natural carbonation in keg?

[imacoming]

Has anyone ever tried natural carbonation in a keg instead of forced carbonation? How did it turn out?

[Bugeater]

There is a lot of conflicting opinion on this topic. It makes no difference in carbonation itself. Some folks claim there is a difference in taste in the finished beer. Others claim no difference at all.

The downside of natural carbonation in the keg is that usually the lid will not seal until you put a couple pounds of pressure in there. The build up of pressure from "natural" carbonation is so slow it is difficult to get a seal. When this happens the priming sugar will ferment out without ever carbonating the beer. To get around this, you need to hit it with CO2. If you are doing that, you might as well carbonate with the CO2 tank.

The other issues are those of being able to dial in the exact carbonation level you want (though with practice you can get it real close) and the yeast sediment in the bottom of the keg. The difference in taste between "natural" and forced carbonation is probably attributable to the increased amount of yeast in the keg from the "natural" carbonation.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

What Bug said. I force carbonate everything.

[DannyW]

I like carbonating in the keg with an adjustable pressure relief valve. I let it ferment for a few days in a bucket, then rack to a keg and fit the adjustable relief set to 25psi (which is around 2.5 volumes at 65F). I usually do 10 gallons at at time, so I hook them together and do both at once.

when it is all done, I chill, decant a half pint or so of sludge, and transfer to a clean keg. Almost all the sludge was left in the bucket, and there is no new sugar being added, so sediment is pretty minimal.

I've always bought the "CO2 is CO2" argument, but now i'm not so sure. there is something different about the carbonation in a highly carbonated bottle conditioned beer than when I carbonate to the same level in a keg. The keg seems to want to give up the CO2 quickly while the bottle conditioned ones seem to release more slowly over the course of the pint.