Keg Life Cycle
Updated: Jun 3, 2022
Keg Punk helps you manage your beer quality by keeping track of how long your kegs are at each stage of their journey through the brewery.
The Keg Life Cycle feature lets you set ranges for various stages and keg sizes. If kegs are within this range, they are flagged GREEN, if they are over they are flagged RED. Keep reading to see how to set your values and use the flags to manage your beer quality.
Set Quality Ranges
In the Options tab, scroll to the Quality section.
There are two columns:
Days In Cellar Before Flag
For each size keg/tank, designate the maximum number of days they can be in the cellar before being flagged. You have the option to set a different value for each size, but it makes more sense to set the same value for each size. This is because a 5 Gallon keg of beer sitting in the cellar will go bad just as fast as a Half-BBL keg of beer sitting in the cellar. In the image below, I've set the value to 30 days.
Days On Tap Before Flag
For each size keg/tank, designate the maximum number of days it can be on tap before being flagged. These numbers should vary, since a Half-BBL keg will likely be on tap longer than a 5 Gallon keg.
Empty Tap
In the Taproom tab, click an empty tap to bring up the tap options. When you select an available batch, you will see how many days ago the batch was brewed, and how many days the remaining kegs of this batch have been in the cellar.
The Days In Cellar value is color coded. Green indicates the kegs have been in the cellar LESS than the value you set while red indicates the kegs have been in the cellar LONGER than the value you set.
You can see below that the remaining kegs of Coastal Decay have been in the cellar 21 days. It's green because 21 days is less than the value of 30 days we set above.
Let's say you want your beer to be as fresh as possible, so you reduce the Days In Cellar value to 15 days instead of 30.
Now the Days In Cellar value is flagged red since 21 is over 15. It also shows how many days past your value the kegs have been in the cellar.
Full Tap
Similarly, if you click a full tap, the tap options will show Brewed, Days In Cellar, and Days On Tap.
The Days On Tap value works the same way - under the value will show green, over the value will show red. You can see below that the keg of "High Times" on Tap 4 was in the cellar for 7 days, and has been on tap for 1 day. Both of these values are within your quality settings so they are flagged green.
In contrast, the Sixtel of "I Smell Ice Cream" on Tap 1 has been on tap for 8 days (3 days over your value of 5) and is flagged red.
Keg Life Cycle
Keg Punk takes this one step further in the Reports tab with the Keg Life Cycle tool.
Keg Life Cycle shows you how kegs move through your brewery. Selecting a BEER will populate the TANK drop-down with any type of keg this beer has ever been packaged in. After you've selected the beer and tank, the chart will populate.
The values are the average number of days the kegs spent at each stage. Below you can see that, on average, Half-BBL kegs of "High Times" are:
Kegged 49 days after brewing
In the cellar for 11 days
On tap for 4 days
