transferring from Sanke to Corny?

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twst1up

twst1up

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I'm realizing that lifting a full 1/2 barrel up into my keezer is a lil' difficult to say the least. I've been thinking maybe i can transfer to 3 cornies instead for ease of movement. Does anyone else do this? Any tips/tricks?

TIA:fro:
 
twst1up said:
I'm realizing that lifting a full 1/2 barrel up into my keezer is a lil' difficult to say the least. I've been thinking maybe i can transfer to 3 cornies instead for ease of movement. Does anyone else do this? Any tips/tricks?

TIA:fro:
Click to expand...

Sure, you can do that. You're going to have to sanitize (of course) and purge the cornies of air by filling them with CO2. Hook up the gas to the cornie and pull open the relief valve on top to let the air out. It only takes about ten seconds of purging to force the air out. Do this to all the cornies. Then you are going to have to pressurize the cornies to about the same pressure as the sankey. After that, hook up a line running from the sankey out tap to the cornies liquid side. Take the gas hook up off the cornie and hook it up to the sankey at about 5 psi. Take your empty cornie and put it on a bathroom scale that you trust. It should weigh about 10 lbs. Being mostly water, it weighs about 8.35lbs/gallon so five gallons weighs about 41.75lbs. Add in the weight of the cornie and you've got 51.75lbs. Play it safe and aim for 51lbs. With the cornie on the scale, the sankey hooked up to it with gas on the sankey and the sankey tap open, pull up on the relief valve of the cornie just a little to let some pressure out of it. The beer should start flowing from the Sankey to the cornie. Keep doing this gradually until you hit your weight then disconnect the cornie and put the next one on and do the same. You'll probably have a little beer left in the sankey but the bulk of it will be in the cornies ready to go. You're probably going to make a bit of a mess so have a towel handy. Good luck.:rockin:

I forgot to add that you should try to keep the empty cornies cold until you're ready to fill them so that the beer doesn't foam like crazy from contact with the warm surface of the keg.
 
eddie said:
Sure, you can do that. You're going to have to sanitize (of course) and purge the cornies of air by filling them with CO2. Hook up the gas to the cornie and pull open the relief valve on top to let the air out. It only takes about ten seconds of purging to force the air out. Do this to all the cornies. Then you are going to have to pressurize the cornies to about the same pressure as the sankey. After that, hook up a line running from the sankey out tap to the cornies liquid side. Take the gas hook up off the cornie and hook it up to the sankey at about 5 psi. Take your empty cornie and put it on a bathroom scale that you trust. It should weigh about 10 lbs. Being mostly water, it weighs about 8.35lbs/gallon so five gallons weighs about 41.75lbs. Add in the weight of the cornie and you've got 51.75lbs. Play it safe and aim for 51lbs. With the cornie on the scale, the sankey hooked up to it with gas on the sankey and the sankey tap open, pull up on the relief valve of the cornie just a little to let some pressure out of it. The beer should start flowing from the Sankey to the cornie. Keep doing this gradually until you hit your weight then disconnect the cornie and put the next one on and do the same. You'll probably have a little beer left in the sankey but the bulk of it will be in the cornies ready to go. You're probably going to make a bit of a mess so have a towel handy. Good luck.:rockin:

I forgot to add that you should try to keep the empty cornies cold until you're ready to fill them so that the beer doesn't foam like crazy from contact with the warm surface of the keg.
Click to expand...

You can also daisy-chain the cornys - Sanke "Out" > "Out" corny 1 "In" > "Out" corny 2 "In" > "Out" corny 3
The first one will fill, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Just make sure you are paying attention when the sanke blows, because it'll push all 15 gallons into the 3rd keg if you let it! ;)
 
It's totally possible to do this and I'm having wicked flashbacks of this process as well. I used to have to this at the brewery: transfer from a 50l sankey to a 20l corny for a few customers. Holy! Was that ever a PITA.

We had everything needed for converting our usual keg washer to cleaning cornies but the whole process of cleaning twice (SOP at the brewery whether it's sankeys or cornies), cleaning/sanitizing the lines for transfer, setting up for transfer, the transfer itself, flushing lines post-transfer... the whole shtick when starting from scratch would take around 90 minutes!!

That idea of daisy chaining the cornies is great! I think we just didn't have enough fittings and lines to do it. Being a commercial brewery we were primarily set up for sankeys but we did do the occasional corny.
 
If you daisy chain, be aware of the possibility of beer getting into your gas lines since there will be little/no headspace in your first two cornies.
 
SowegaBrews said:
If you daisy chain, be aware of the possibility of beer getting into your gas lines since there will be little/no headspace in your first two cornies.
Click to expand...

You can add headspace though... After the sanke blows, you can push a little extra from keg 1 to kegs 2 and 3. Then disconnect keg 1, and hook up to keg 2 and push a little more to keg 3.

And if that doesn't make any sense, you can always have a beer or 2 from each keg ;)
 
SweetSounds said:
You can add headspace though... After the sanke blows, you can push a little extra from keg 1 to kegs 2 and 3. Then disconnect keg 1, and hook up to keg 2 and push a little more to keg 3.

And if that doesn't make any sense, you can always have a beer or 2 from each keg ;)
Click to expand...

Yup. Just making sure everyone's aware. :mug:
 
Rather than pulling the relief valve occasionally, you can partially unscrew it until the beer starts to flow.
 
ANNNNDD if we REALLY wanna keep this thread going....

you could connect the gas out of the last corny, to the gas in of the 1/2bbl keg (after you purge with CO2 of course), elevate the 1/2BBL, and just siphon the beer into the bottom 3. Thereby transferring in a closed, pressurized system.
 
My old neighbor fills my cornies all the time from a sanke. HE just opens the cornie and pors the beer in from his picnic tap from the sanke like he was pouring a beer. He also ladels out foam. Then he bleeds off the air, pressurizes and calls it a day. My beer has always kept very well and there doesn't appear to be any problem with this.
 

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