Any way to carbonate a keg without opening it and without a regulator?

I have a 19L corny keg full of NEIPA that I wanted to force carb and get drinking quickly. After cooling the keg to 6 degrees I gave it an initial blast of CO2 to 30 psi. As I was shaking the keg, I knocked over the tank and broke my only regulator. It's not easy to buy one where I live so I ordered a new regulator online, but it will take about a week to arrive. So now I have a keg in my fridge with about 0.5L of headspace that's pressurized to 30psi; it's been like this for a couple of days, so I'd guess the beer is probably carbed to only around 3psi /1.5vol at this point.

I don't want to open it and risk introducing oxygen, so I can't prime it naturally, and my regulator would likely arrive before it's fully carbed anyway.

Should I:

  1. Continue to shake the keg frequently (how frequently?)
  2. Try (with difficulty) to think about something else until my new regulator arrives
  3. Other (what?)

Topic force-carbonation corny-keg carbonation homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

You can condition carbonate in your keg. This isn't the best for a neipa and would take at least 2 weeks at room temperature, but I think keg conditioning is safer than bottle conditioning due the risk of oxydation.

1
answered at

I can say likely the "best" option is to just wait for a new regulator to arrive (got a local brew club you can borrow one from?) and carbonate the beer the right way.

But, assuming you HAVE to have this beer NOW

The CO2 you have in there presently isn't going to cut it- even if you shake it. At best, you'll have pretty flat shaken up beer (which you've noted).

If you can safely blip in minor bits of CO2 to the keg (even though the regulator is broken) to "top-off" the CO2 and shake (rinse, repeat)- it will work. It will require drinking a lot of foamy beer while you try to dial it in.

Personally- I avoid the shake method for beers, even if you've racked carefully into the keg the shake method makes all the beers too sandy with sediment. You might not care about the sediment, and the NEIPA style will cover up some of it, but not by much.

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