Aging in Keg

I brewed a Russian imperial stout yesterday, my plan is to put it in secondary with cold steeped coffee for about 2-3 weeks in my Ferm chamber, and then age on some homemade vanilla extract in my corney keg for 6 months. My question is... Do I have to hook up the gas during aging, and once I'm ready to drink, do I have to rack to another keg or is the one I aged in fine? Thanks in advance

You can age beer prior to carbonation, should be no difference in the final product. As for the racking thing, you can go either way on that, though not racking may result in the first few pints dragging some sediment up...

Cheers!

So pretty much just rack from secondary into the keg, on top of my extract? Do I need to worry about oxidation?

gatorbite87 said:

So pretty much just rack from secondary into the keg, on top of my extract? Do I need to worry about oxidation?

Click to expand...

rack as normal to minimize oxidation, then temporarily hook it up to your CO2 to purge the air from the dead space at the top of the keg. Once it's been "charged" you can disconnect it for aging.

gatorbite87 said:

So pretty much just rack from secondary into the keg, on top of my extract? Do I need to worry about oxidation?

Click to expand...

Yes, and yes.

To expand:

- you could just age in the secondary if it's not oxygen-permeable, no real need to rack it before aging, unless you need that secondary for something more important.

- any time you rack after primary fermentation you want to be careful about oxygenation. Think "quiet". Keep the transfer line submerged at both ends, then purge any head space in the receiving vessel with CO2 (even better, purge the receiving vessel with CO2 before the transfer).

Cheers!

Thanks for your suggestions. I transferred to the keg tonight. Used a closed transfer by racking through the liquid out and putting the gas put into a bucket of water to release gas. Of course I purged and sanitized before all this

gatorbite87 said:

Thanks for your suggestions. I transferred to the keg tonight. Used a closed transfer by racking through the liquid out and putting the gas put into a bucket of water to release gas. Of course I purged and sanitized before all this

Click to expand...

Did you use a gravity siphon or did you use CO2 to push the beer into the keg?

Looks like an auto siphon in the carboy so I'd say gravity

Used my autosiphon attached to a ball lock disconnect. I used CO2 to push out the sanitizer and purge the keg beforehand, and made sure the gas out was in santizer so O2 didn't get sucked back in