Cornelius fermenter and transfer

I just started using a ten gallon corny keg as a fermenter. It has almost the same diameter as a 6.5 gallon carboy. I don't trust glass carboys and was about to make the change to better bottles when I bought the corny.

Tonight I transferred my Pliny the Elder clone from the corny to 5 gallon corny. It's very easy to do just needs a jumper cable and a tank to provide pressure. The system works great and it's nice to not have to start a siphon and to have a sealed system.

The couple of drips is from not having the jumper seated right in the beginning.

Nice. Those 10 gallon cornies are hard to come by.

How do you release CO2 during fermentation? Did you trim the liquid out pickup to keep it above the trub and yeast cake, or how do you prevent transfer of sediment?

I would love to get some of these. Sweet setup. My friend brought this one over the other day. ANyone know where to get these? Are they dairy kegs?

billtzk said:

Nice. Those 10 gallon cornies are hard to come by.

How do you release CO2 during fermentation? Did you trim the liquid out pickup to keep it above the trub and yeast cake, or how do you prevent transfer of sediment?

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I cut the dip tube down an inch and a half. Still got nearly five gallons of beer in my serving keg and very little was left over. What remained was quite yeasty.

To get rid of CO2 I built a simple airlock using a quick disconnect and a piece of CO2 tubing and an airlock with welding rod to support it.


Korndog - That looks a lot like the keg I have. I don't know if they're dairy kegs or what but they are hard to come by. I'm looking for another myself.

This is awesome. Lightbulbs just went off. I am so tired of having to worry about my beer quantity from start to finish and the sanitation of it all. This would make the process so much more simple. I like it a lot, cheers!

When you transfer to your 5 gallon do you keep the lid off?

Im just guessing that you would get a lot of pressure other wise

The lid stays on the five gallon keg. You can't see it in the picture well but the keg has an airlock on it which lets out some pressure. I would think that if you didn't vent it that eventually liquid wouldn't get pushed over.

do you do anything different with your dip tube like shorten it so your not getting as much sediment.

Yes, I cut the dip tube down by 1.5 inches. Leaves most of the sediment behind while getting most the beer.

Basically you've got a big comfortable unbreakable carboy with improved access and built-in transfer mechanism. I think it beats using a Sanke keg to ferment in, all except for the volume superiority of the Sanke, because of the ease of access and tranfer. A conical is arguably better in some ways, but you pay for it. Nice.

Here's a brand new one for only $425.00 Yikes.