After your cold brew coffee has steeped for the desired amount of time in your Large Batch Cold Brew Coffee System (typically 12-16 hours), you are ready to keg your cold brew coffee to serve on draft!
How to Brew Large Batches
of Cold Brew coffee (Part 2)
Step 1: Attach your cleaned and sanitized hose barb to the end of the ball valve. Wrap the threads with some Teflon Tape to prevent any leaks during this process and secure (lightly) with a wrench.
Step 2: Attach your cleaned and sanitized silicone transfer hose to the hose barb.
Step 3: Place the other end of your silicone hose in a cleanaed and sanitized Corny Keg.
Step 4: Open the ball valve and your filtered cold brew coffee will quickly flow into your keg. Depending on the batch size you may need multiple kegs to fill.
Step 5: Reattach the lid to the keg to prevent any outside contaminants from falling in.
Step 6: Attach the gas side disconnect to your gas-in post on your corny keg, and set the pressure on your regulator to around 10-20 PSI. Purge the oxygen from the keg by pulling the relief vale on the keg a few times.
Note: If you are using a Pin Lock Corny Keg, you may not have that has a pull-style relief valve. If that is the case, simply attach your gas hose to your keg, set your regulator to around 10 PSI and fill the keg with nitrogen. Then remove the gas disconnect, and depress the poppet inside the gas side post to release the air from the keg. Do this a couple times.
Step 7: Connect your liquid side disconnect to your keg, and place your keg in the Cold Brew Nitro Coffee Kegerator.
Step 8: For serving Nitro Coffee on Draft: Set your regulator between 35-55 PSI. Before pressurizing your keg, make sure it is chilled to serving temperature (generally 33-40F). Colder liquids will absorb gasses better than warmer liquids. Keep your keg at refrigerated and allow it to sit under pressure for at least 24-48 hours before serving. The longer the better to help give your nitro coffee that rich creamy head. Serve your nitro coffee at these high pressures as well. The stout faucet that you will be using to serve nitro coffee has a restrictor plate in it which allows you to serve at very high pressures without your beverage splattering everywhere.
Also note when serving nitro coffee, we prefer using 100% Nitrogen as opposed to beer gas. Beer gas will give you a better cascading effect in your nitro coffee when poured, but the CO2 in beer gas will effect the flavor and mouth feel of your coffee.
Pouring a Creamy Nitro Coffee: When your keg is ready to serve, pull the nitro faucet all the way forward so that it is parallel with the ground. Pour straight down the middle of the glass. When the glass is about 3/4 full, flip the handle back up, and push backwards to activate the creamer effect for the last 1/4 of the glass. Fill nearly to the brim of the glass. With nitrogen, you don’t have to worry about foam growing in your glass like a typical draft beer. The level you stop pouring at is just about the level that it will stay and will settle into a rich full glass of cold brew nitro coffee!
Step 9: For Serving Flat or Iced Cold Brew Coffee on Draft: Simply set your regulator around 5 PSI. You want to keep the pressure low so you don’t force any unwanted gas into your coffee. Serve draft iced coffees from a standard stainless steel beer faucet.
Keeping it Flat: When serving flat/iced-coffee on draft we highly recommend only using pure nitrogen for the same reasons listed above. But also since this is meant to be a flat iced-coffee you will notice any hint of carbonation that makes its way into the coffee. With beer gas you will notice the CO2 in the coffee in a matter of days. With pure nitrogen, you probably won’t notice any carbonation or change in flavor for the life of the keg!
Looking to Serve nitro Coffee on Draft?
We have a wide range of ready-to-go Nitro Coffee Kegerators!
Andrew Hope
Hey Guys – I am wondering how many liters of coffee can be pushed out of a corny keg with a 2.5lb Nitrogen tank when the reg is set to 35 psi? I figure it will be less than using co2 or beer gas. Can you estimate something here please? Thanks!