[majorvices]

Does anyone know many volumes of co2 I need to charge a beer to serve on beer gas? I'm a total beer gas noob.

[tschmidlin]

It's pretty much up to you.  I usually go for 1.5-2 volumes of CO2, so I put 6-8 psi on the keg and get it carbed, then serve at ~24 psi with a 70/30 N2/CO2 mix.

Is this some weird april fools joke that I don't get?

[majorvices]

Nah, I just got beer gas recently and decides to experiment with it. Thanks for the tips!

[tschmidlin]

Let us know what you figure out.

[rjharper]

From what I've picked up, and learnt the hard way, you're looking for about half the volumes with beer gas for stouts and English ales. So if the beer blend is 25% CO2, then you're looking for double the pressure to get the CO2 partial pressure down.

For my system, I run CO2 at 14psi for regular beers, and hold my nitro beers at 28psi, which puts the CO2 partial pressure at 7psi. You also need nitro beers at 25-30psi to get the right flow through the faucets. Line length isn't so important on beer blend.

Now you can carb on straight CO2 to the volumes needed then just transfer over to blend, or if you're patient, just hook up to blend and forget it, but it takes a while longer to carb up (even to half the volumes) since the headspace becomes saturated with N2 as the CO2 dissolves.

[tschmidlin]

You should carb with CO2, not the blend, otherwise it throws off the ratio of the blend.

[rjharper]

That's the preferred route because the N2 won't dissolve.  Of course, if you're like me, and have run out of CO2 lines, you can just vent the keg to get the balance back.

[majorvices]

Trying it right now! Excited like a little girl at a bieber concert