The four most important areas for proper use and care of your kegerator are cleanliness, maintaining proper temperature, using appropriate CO2 pressure, and safe operation of your unit. If you take care in the first three areas, you should be able to enjoy problem free beer. However, if any of these three are neglected, your beer could easily be ruined. If you ignore safety concerns, damage to your unit, and injuries to yourself, could be the result.

Proper Cleaning

You need to thoroughly clean every part of your kegerator that touches beer. This includes the coupler, pressure regulator, beer lines, and spigots. These parts should be cleaned every time you change kegs, or every three weeks, if your kegs last longer than that (and shame on you, if they do). When you disassemble and clean each component, make sure you use a cleaning solution designed specifically for the use. Most household detergents will leave a residue that will ruin your beer. In addition to using a beer line cleaning solution, you should scrub each component with a brush.

Failure to maintain a proper cleaning regimen will allow yeast, calcium, mold, and bacteria to build up in your lines and on other components. Any of those four items will ruin your beer upon contact. Each time you re-assemble after cleaning, its also a good idea to put appropriate lubrication on the o-rings and check all of the parts for wear or cracks. If you want to be very diligent about cleaning, there are pump style cleaning systems available that circulate the cleaning solution through your system. This type of system is much more efficient than hand cleaning.

Maintaining Appropriate Temperature

The correct temperature for storing or serving draught beer is 38 F. A consistent temperature range of 34-38F is required for optimal beer. Temperature variances outside of 34-38 range will have a negative effect on your beer.

When draft beer gets warm, it’ll become foamy. Foam is created when the CO2 “breaks out” of the beer or is released. An increase in temperature of just 1 is enough to create foamy beer. A keg that is too warm can also create a cloudy pour with a sour taste. Worse yet, if the temperature goes over 50F, bacteria could breed, and ruin the keg.

If the beer is kept too cold, the carbonation will not be released, and your beer will be flat and taste stale. Beer will freeze if the temperature falls to 28F. Once beer has been frozen, it’s ruined.

There are steps you can take to help maintain proper temperature. First of all, locate your kegerator away from any source of heat or direct sunlight. Secondly, locate your unit in a location with proper air circulation and at least an inch of clearance on all sides. Don’t place your unit in a built-in or recessed area, unless your kegerator was specifically designed as a built-in unit. Make sure that you monitor your temperatures. A popular method is simply keeping a kitchen thermometer, or meat probe in your kegerator. It’s also a good idea to periodically check the temperature of a freshly drawn beer.

Using Correct CO2 Pressure

The pressure regulator is the key part to make sure you have correct pressure. There are two basic types of regulators, single gauge and double gauge regulators. Single gauge regulators measure the pressure in the keg, which is the most important reading. The double gauge regulators have an additional gauge for measuring the CO2 tank pressure. The dual gauge regulator is preferable, because it will alert you to a CO2 bottle getting empty, but it isn’t necessary.

The correct pressure is critical, and improper settings will noticeably change the quality and appearance of each pour. The average pressure setting is 12-14 PSI, and will vary slightly by type of beer, and even keg to keg of the same beer. We like to start our pressure off at 13 PSI, and fine tune from there. If the pressure is too low, the CO2 will “break out” in the form of small bubbles in the beer that will make it go flat. If the pressure is too high, you will experience an extremely foamy pour with more head than beer. It’s also a good idea to let a new keg sit for 24 hours, so both the temperature and pressure can stabilize, before making your first pour.

Safe Use of Your Kegerator

The most critical safety issue with kegerators is the proper handling and use of the CO2 tank. Many of these items are common sense, but failure to heed common sense with CO2 cylinders could result in serious injury, and being a finalist for the annual Darwin Awards.

First of all, never attempt to refill a CO2 bottle yourself. Finding a local refill source is typically easy to do, and not very expensive. Secondly, the cylinder must always be connected to a regulator or not connected at all. Be sure to connect a regulator to your bottle before opening the cylinder valve. Never connect the cylinder directly to the keg. Never throw or drop a CO2 bottle, or place it near sources of heat. Extra cylinders should be stored in a dry, cool location that is well ventilated. If you suspect or detect a leak, ventilate to best of your ability and leave the area.

Additional safety issues include not using an indoor rated unit outdoors, making sure your unit has adequate ventilation so it doesn’t over heat, and whenever possible, do not hook unit into an extension cord. If the desired location of your kegerator does require an extension cord, make sure the cord is a 3 wire, grounded cord, and has a UL rating higher than your unit.

Kegerator Use and Care

Deluxe Beer Line Cleaning Kit

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Homemade beer process..

Ready to try brewing your first homebrew? Below is one of my homebrew recipes, along with brewing equipment, beer ingredients and steps that can be followed to brew your own beer. It is a very simple homebrew recipe and process that can be done on the kitchen stove, and tastes great when finished!

Brewing equipment you will need:

– 6.5 gallon fermenter-plastic bucket where fermentation takes place

- Lid for fermenter-covers fermenter, make sure it has a hole in the top to insert stopper and airlock

- Bung/stopper-fits in lid of fermenter, holds airlock

- Airlock-fits in bung and is placed in hole on fermenter lid-will be filled halfway with water/vodka/sanitizer-CO2 will escape through here during fermentation

- Brewpot-at least a 20 quart, stainless steel pot, where boil will take place

- Turkey baster-can be used to squirt any sanitizer over equipment and take wort sample

- Sanitizer-One Step or equivalent

- Whisk or wort spoon-to vigorously stir wort after brewing and before pitching yeast in order to introduce oxygen

- A pair of tongs-helps remove hop bags from the wort after brewing

- Spoon-make sure it is suitable to be placed in boiling liquids so it will not melt-this will be used to occasionally stir wort during the boil

- Hop Bags/muslin bags/grain bags-used to contain hops or malt that are added

- Dial thermometer-cooking thermometer to take wort temps when steeping grains and cooling wort

- Hydrometer and jar/tube-takes Original Gravity reading after brewing and cooling of wort

- Measuring Cup-used to measure water volumes and can be used to rinse grain after steeping

The homemade beer process below can be adjusted and followed for any specialty grain/extract brew, not just the homebrew recipe below, as the steps are pretty much the same for this type of brewing (you’ll just have to obviously adjust grain/hop amounts etc particular to style and recipe you are using).

Brewing a Dunkleweizen at home!

Batch Size: 5 gallons
Priming Technique at bottling time (bottling procedure not covered on this page) : 2/3 cup corn sugar
Original Gravity: 1063
Final Gravity (after fermentation): 1017

Ingredients:

7 lbs. Muntons Plain Wheat DME unhopped (55% wheat, 45% barley)
0.5 lb. Chocolate Malt
1 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh pellet hops (3.8% alpha, 60 mins in boil)
0.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh pellet hops (3.8 % alpha, 30 mins in boil)
0.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh pellet hops (3.8% alpha, 15 mins in boil)
Wyeast Weihenstephan Wheat Yeast, # 3068 (1 qt. starter, 2 X 1/3 cups DME)

Notes:

-fermented at low end of range (about 63F), very nice beer but could use a bit more banana/clove by fermenting at higher temps
-this beer turned out well, it took two 2nd place ribbons in homebrew competitions

Steps:

Warning!! Please read instructions in their entirety before starting brewing process!

1. Place crushed chocolate malt into a hop bag/grain bag and let steep in 2.5 gallons of water for 30 minutes, at 150F. You can occasionally swirl or steep the bag in the liquid, just like you would when making hot tea.
2. After 30 mins of steeping, remove the bag of grain, and rinse it slowly with one quart of warm water. DO NOT squeeze the bag to extract liquid, simply rinse. Bring the grain-infused water to boil.
3. After the boil has begun, remove the brewpot from the heat. Open the bags of malt extract and slowly pour them in. Make sure to stir constantly as you are slowly adding the extract and avoid letting the extract hit the bottom of the brewpot.
4. Put the brewpot back over the heat and commence boiling. BE CAREFUL OF BOILOVERS AT ALL TIMES! DO NOT COVER YOUR BREWPOT WITH A LID!
5. Once the wort has commenced boiling, take one full oz. of the hops, place them in a hop bag, tie it off, and add it to the boil. This marks the beginning of the 60 minute boil. Stir occasionally. Again, watch for boilovers during the entire boil. Add the half-ounce hop addition in the same manner at 30 minutes into the boil, and again at 45 minutes into the boil.
6. Boil for 15 more minutes after the last half-ounce hop addition, making the total boil time a 60 minute boil.
7. Toward the end of your 60 minute boil, you must prepare to sanitize all of your equipment. Sanitize everything that will come in contact with your wort after it has cooled. This includes the turkey baster, whisk, lid, airlock, fermenter, thermometer stem, and stopper. Make sure all parts of your fermenter have come in contact with sanitizer. If using One-Step, use at least 3 gallons of water and 3 tablespoons of One-Step to sanitize. You may even sanitize in your fermenter if need be, just be careful to not scratch the interior surface of the bucket.
8. After the equipment has been sanitized pour out the sanitizing solution (it does not need rinsed if using One-Step) and add three gallons of COLD water to the fermenter. Fill the airlock halfway with water and insert it into the rubber stopper. Place the lid on the fermenter, and put the rubber stopper/airlock into the hole in the bung.
9. Toward the end of the 60 minute boil, prepare to cool your hot wort by filling a sink halfway with COLD water and ice.
10. After the wort has boiled for an hour, remove it from the heat and turn off your stove. Remove the hop bags from the wort, COVER your pot with the pot lid and place it into the ice water bath for 20 minutes. DO NOT ADD ICE OR THE ICE WATER DIRECTLY INTO YOUR BREWPOT. You may have to change the water in the sink after about the first 10 minutes as it will absorb the heat from your brewpot. Again, total cooling time should only take 20-30 minutes.
11. Prepare yeast (only if using dry yeast to substitute for the Weihenstephan yeast, however the final beer character will not be the same).
12. Add the wort from your brewpot to the cold water in your fermenter. Total volume of beer in the fermenter should be between 5.25-5.5 gallons. Depending on the intensity of your boil, it varies how much liquid was boiled off during the boil. MIX THE WORT AND WATER WELL WITH A SANITIZED WHISK/SPOON. After evenly mixed, make sure the wort is cooled down to at least 75 degrees (it should be). Make sure everything that comes in contact with your wort has been sanitized, and don’t cough or sneeze over your fermenter!
13. When your wort is cool (at least 75 degrees), take a sample of the wort (make sure its mixed thoroughly from previous step!) with your turkey baster and place it into the hydrometer jar with the hydrometer. Make sure the hydrometer floats freely. Write your specific gravity down (it should be approximately 1060-1063), and make any adjustments due to temperature (see Hydrometer page). This is your original gravity. DO NOT return the sample to your fermenter, drink it in a separate glass instead.
14. Stir wort vigorously with the whisk until the wort surface is nice and frothy. This will introduce oxygen that is beneficial to yeast reproduction during fermentation.
15. Pour in (pitch) your yeast and snap on the lid. Fill the airlock about halfway with water or vodka if you haven’t already done so. This way CO2 will escape, but nothing can get into your homebrew. Make sure the bung and airlock is in place on the lid.
16. Place the fermenter in a spot where it will not be disturbed, ideally in a spot between 65-70F.
17. Your done! (You still need to bottle after fermentation is complete in about 7-10 days) Congrats, you’ve just finished your first homebrew! You should see signs of fermentation within 24 hours. Signs of yeast fermentation include: bubbling of your airlock from the release of CO2, uneven water levels in the airlock, and krausen, which is a crusty or cake-like ring that will form around the edge of your fermenter inside. Do not open the lid or take off the airlock during fermentation if you do not have to.
18. Your homemade beer should be ready to drink 2-3 weeks after the bottling date.

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