More Kegs!

Now that we’ve got 2 beers on tap (soon to be 3) and more brews planned out in the future, we are running out of kegs. To keep our pipeline steady, we need to have extra kegs carbonating in the kegerator. There is room for 5 in there, so if we have 3 on tap, we could potentially fit another 2 kegs. Those 2 beers could be carbonating (and lagering if they’re lagers) while we wait to empty the current beers. That way, when one keg is empty, we’ll have the “on-deck” beers to change out and  they’ll be ready to drink right away instead of having to wait a week like we normally do.

I recently found some cash in an old drawer and thought it would be put to good use buying some equipment off Craig’s List. I have been using Google Reader to search Craigslist for homebrew equipment over the past few years, and it was how I was able to find our kegerator. Luckily for me, the service is still operational until the end of this month (http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_23435727/googles-reader-is-going-away-but-you-have). I did a quick search after the brew session and found a post for some used kegs at $45/each that were posted earlier in the day. Normally, to buy online, new kegs are around $130 and used about $60 + shipping. Needless to say, $45 is a pretty good price, and most other people agree as used kegs don’t typically last long on Craig’s List.

We got another 2 kegs, which now brings our total to a modest 6. I would still like to grow that number so we could do our high-gravity seasonal beers (like our Snow and Russian Imperial Stout) in kegs. Those beers really have to be aged to get the best beer, so if we could avoid bottling and have enough kegs to age in the keg, that would be ideal. Also, in a year or 2, we are going to upgrade the kegerator to a chest freezer which will be able to support upwards of 8 kegs, but we’ll probably keep it to 4 on tap. With the extra room, we’ll have plenty of beer on deck and we can make more lagers and lager them properly for a few months before we serve. In all, we’ll slowly grow the supply when good deals pop up on Craig’s List, probably to about 10-12 kegs.

Next beer planned is going to be the Black IPA (Sublimely Self-Righteous Clone). We are thinking probably Next Saturday or Sunday. The Pale Ale is done fermenting now, and we'll give the yeast a couple more days to clean up before we cold crash and then keg. Hopefully we'll be drinking that beer in about 10 more days.