Kegging and Cleaning

I haven’t kegged a beer since we moved in to the new place, and somewhat shamefully, I haven’t cleaned the keg of Pale that I brewed for the move-in weekend. Yes, that means I’ve had an empty keg sitting in the fridge for nearly 5 months. In my defense, I’ve only just recently started brewing, and there hasn’t been room to store the empty shells, so the fridge seemed like an ideal spot.

Sadly, because of the, uh, aging that the previous ale had done in the last several months, cleaning the kegs was a bit of work. First a scrub with warm water, then a good 20 minutes of soaking with PBW followed by a sanitization with iodophor before kegging the beers.

The squash ale finished at 1.012 and tasted spicy, which my wife assures me is good (I brewed it for her). The IPA also finished at 1.012 and I didn’t rack it to secondary like I normally do, but it has been resting nicely on the sun room floor (covered, of course) and has a really great British IPA flavor. It’s milder, due to it’s lower OG (1.048), and should be ready to drink this weekend. The squash ale is for Thanksgiving, so hands off!

3 thoughts on “Kegging and Cleaning”

  1. We just went to the La Conner brewery this weekend. I had a Christmas ale (can’t remember the name for the life of me). It was a London style ale at 9%. I was anticipating a shorty glass, but it came in a full pint and only cost $3.75. Now there is a quick way to get tanked.

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