3 replies to this topic

[Big Nake]

There are some nice processes that can work really nicely for brewers even if you're not interested in low-O2 brewing and I thought I would share.  Some of the helpful & resourceful brewers on the low-O2 forum were kind enough to help with some of these things and they have definitely made some things easier.  One area is how they transfer from fermenter to keg.  Many of these guys use a stainless fermenter with a port (I think Drez has this type of fermenter) and as an experiment I thought I would try a plastic bottling bucket with a spigot.  Basically ferment in the bottling bucket and when it's time to transfer the beer to the keg, simply attach a clean and sanitized length of tubing to the spigot for a closed transfer.  An even better approach is to use the CO2 from fermentation to purge your keg of O2.  The guys over there have mentioned that the fermentation of one 5-gallon batch of beer creates enough CO2 to completely purge 20 kegs.  So I will clean and sanitize a keg on brewday and connect tubing from the airlock and on the other end of the tubing is a liquid-out QD.  Connect that end to the keg and also place a gas-ib QD on the other side connected to some tubing and have the other end of that go into a bucket of Starsan solution.  When it comes time to transfer, just place the fermenter higher than the keg, move the tubing from the airlock to the spigot, open the spigot and use gravity to send your beer into the clean, sanitized and purged keg.  This is probably the most useful piece of information I have gotten and it makes "transfer day" a snap.  I'm sure many of you already have a brilliant way to do this but for me coming from doing open-transfers, this was a big help.   

[positiveContact]

I do some of those but still use my co2 to push the beer. I don't want to move my primary if I don't have to.

[Seven]

How do you know when to stop the transfer into the keg? I typically have some extra beer in the fermenter that I either toss or throw into a 2L soda bottle. I try to fill the keg to just below the gas in dip tube.

[Big Nake]

How do you know when to stop the transfer into the keg? I typically have some extra beer in the fermenter that I either toss or throw into a 2L soda bottle. I try to fill the keg to just below the gas in dip tube.

Yeah, that's tricky.  I try to combat that at the point of filling the primary and making sure that I have somewhere around 5.25 gallons in the fermenter at the start of the process.  I stop my transfer when I start seeing air bubbles in the transfer.  Once that starts I'm done transferring and close the port.  I think the worst thing that may happen there is that I'm a quart low in the keg or something.  It also does leave a bit more wort in the fermenter and if I want to harvest yeast I usually have to pour some liquid off and then collect the yeast.  I have made 5 batches this way and I have another lager and another ale in primary now.  The lager will be transferred tomorrow night and I'm liking the process.