Partially filling keg

[HoweFox]

I recently bought a keg setup and my first beer that I can put in it is a pumpkin ale. I made a 6 gallon batch so I need to bottle at least a gallon, but I was planning on giving away quite a bit of this batch to family at Thanksgiving, since I can't imagine me wanting to drink 5 gallons of it just for myself. Is it ok to just fill my keg with 3 or 4 gallons? Any problems with carbonating with a non-full keg? Will it keep just as long?

As for the bottling should I try to calculate the amount of sugar to still batch prime, or just add so much sugar to each bottle? I did get a package of those sugar drop things (look like hard candies) about a year ago...I guess I could use those, but I'm not really sure how many to add per bottle.

[mr x]

You can partially fill, but be sure to purge really well. As far as carbonating, I've added sugar to bottles before.

[LeafMan66_67]

The carb drops work. If they are the Coopers tabs from NG, I've used one in a grolsch bottle, two in a 500 ml or 650ml.

[CorneliusAlphonse]

I usually keghowever much I want, figure out how much volume I've got left, boil up some sugar and water, mix in and bottle. If I've only got a half dozen bottles I just put a bit of sugar in each bottle, I don't remember how much specifically.

[spears104]

I do this all of the time. The keg actually seems to carbonate faster when it is not full. As X said, be sure to purge the keg well. Probably squeeze and dump 3-4 times. I still boil a proportionate amount of water/sugar and batch prime no matter how small a quantity of beer I am bottling. I used the carb drops before with disastrous results (probably my fault, although I still can't figure out why.)

[HoweFox]

Sweet thanks for all the replies!