Kegging

Kegging means transferring finished beer into a sealed, pressure-rated keg, most commonly a Cornelius or ball-lock style keg, rather than filling and capping dozens of individual bottles. A CO2 tank connected through a regulator supplies gas to both carbonate the beer and push it out through a tap when it is time to pour, replacing the yeast-driven carbonation used in bottles.

Compared to bottling, kegging is faster at packaging time since there is one vessel to fill instead of many, and it lets you serve beer on demand without waiting the one to two weeks bottle conditioning normally takes. The tradeoff is upfront cost and space, since a full kegging setup needs a keg, a CO2 tank, a regulator, tubing, and either a keezer or dedicated fridge space to keep beer cold and under pressure.

A common point of confusion for people switching from bottling is how differently carbonation is controlled: kegged beer is carbonated by setting CO2 pressure at a given temperature rather than by measuring out sugar, so it needs a different mental model and, usually, a chart matching pressure and temperature to a target carbonation level. Leaks at keg fittings and couplers are also a frequent early troubleshooting issue worth checking with a sanitizer solution or leak detector.