The kegging was great - essentially consisting of the first step of bottling - you transfer into a clean container. And then you're done - no mixing sugar, no transferring to bottles, not capping. Just a few seconds blast of CO2 to purge the O2 and away you go. Not being a patient man, I took a bit of a carbing shortcut - I pressurized to 30PSI, unhooked the gas line, and shook the beer. This got it ~50% of the way carb'd. I then hooked up the lines, re-pressurized to serving pressure (14PSI) and let sit until carb'd - about 3 days. Beer was properly carb'd when tested on day 4.
There is one minor problem, that being the first few seconds of a pour are all foam. A bit of investigating has revealed that this is due to warming of the beer in the tower portion of my kegorator. To fix this, I'll be sheathing the beer-line in copper tubing, which'll act as a heat-sink to the main body of the kegorator. A minor problem, but one which is irritating none-the-less.
As for the beer, its good. This is the sixth or seventh time I've brewed this beast, and as in the past its a good beer. The only difference is the brew has a bit of a yeasty odour/flavour. I did swap out my normal Wyeast American Ale for Safale US-05, but I doubt that is the issue - far more likely, I kegged to soon. It should fade with ageing - that is, if I don't drink all the beer first.
Since this beer is kegged, the label is for a tap handle (see image to left). But since some will need to go into bottles, I've designed bottle labels as well (image below).
