Can you tell me about your soda water/seltzer (soft) setup?
I've had a kegerator in my house for over a decade and am finally ready to bite the bullet on buying hardware to dedicate one of my taps to keeping cold soda water fresh and available. My family goes through a LOT of cans of the flavored stuff and this is an investment I want to make to do my small part to reduce waste. From what I've read so far it is as "easy" as filling a keg with water (distilled in my case), pressurizing it with CO2 (I think just by dialing up the pressure to 30psi?) for a day, then drop the pressure to line level for serving. Forget the flavoring aspect right now, I know how to make cocktail syrups and that's plenty of flavor to add to the blank slate of carbonated water. Flavor is a future problem, I think. For now I want to focus on (1) making the water mix and getting it served, (2) how to clean the parts, and (3) tips and ideas you got to down the road, after you started doing soda water and realized "shucks, if I had done X instead, the Y would be so much easier or cheaper"
My setup would have the keg and dedicated 5lb CO2 tank outside my fridge; I'll run a long beer/water line into the fridge to keep at least 30 ounces cold in the lines, then up to the tap.
I have only ever bought beer kegs from distributors and never brewed my own so I don't know the names of parts, the type of keg or couplers, etc that I will need for this. How often do I need to clean the keg if only distilled water and gas ever go into it? What kind of cleaners do I need? Is there a trick to pressuring the water? Tips for getting the line/distribution pressure dialed in?
Thanks in advance for your wisdom!
P.S. this is entirely for my family, I hate carbonated water. My 5 favorite drinks are Guinness, Guinness, Guinness, Guinness extra stout if needed, and bud lite if Guinness is not available.
I've had a kegerator in my house for over a decade and am finally ready to bite the bullet on buying hardware to dedicate one of my taps to keeping cold soda water fresh and available. My family goes through a LOT of cans of the flavored stuff and this is an investment I want to make to do my small part to reduce waste. From what I've read so far it is as "easy" as filling a keg with water (distilled in my case), pressurizing it with CO2 (I think just by dialing up the pressure to 30psi?) for a day, then drop the pressure to line level for serving. Forget the flavoring aspect right now, I know how to make cocktail syrups and that's plenty of flavor to add to the blank slate of carbonated water. Flavor is a future problem, I think. For now I want to focus on (1) making the water mix and getting it served, (2) how to clean the parts, and (3) tips and ideas you got to down the road, after you started doing soda water and realized "shucks, if I had done X instead, the Y would be so much easier or cheaper"
My setup would have the keg and dedicated 5lb CO2 tank outside my fridge; I'll run a long beer/water line into the fridge to keep at least 30 ounces cold in the lines, then up to the tap.
I have only ever bought beer kegs from distributors and never brewed my own so I don't know the names of parts, the type of keg or couplers, etc that I will need for this. How often do I need to clean the keg if only distilled water and gas ever go into it? What kind of cleaners do I need? Is there a trick to pressuring the water? Tips for getting the line/distribution pressure dialed in?
Thanks in advance for your wisdom!
P.S. this is entirely for my family, I hate carbonated water. My 5 favorite drinks are Guinness, Guinness, Guinness, Guinness extra stout if needed, and bud lite if Guinness is not available.