How much can I ferment in corny?

Looking to use one to primary a lager. Will pitch @ 55° and reduce to 48° over course of fermentation. Standard gravity and I have a 1-way valve. I'd like to get as much in as possible. Just need a final quantity to plan wort cooling.

It depends, really, on how good your fermentation chiller is. With a lager you can get away with a lot skinnier cooler than you could with a hefeweizen.

With ale yeasts running under 65°F through primary I am comfortable filling right up to the weld line where the straight sides meet the curved top.

With a wheat yeast on aple juice I pitch the yeast on four gallons of liquid and then add another half gallon after a couple days.

If one way valve = spunding valve be sure to get a really good whirlpool so you limit the trub in the bottom of the keg. Use enough Irish moss for a ten gallon batch, cool your wort agressively, wait patiently after whirlpooling, I had real good luck waiting 25 minutes last time; and siphon carefully.

I have attempted two lagers, both were pitched on 4.5 gallons with temp control not as good as you are shooting for. Neither overflowed. Though both were dumped I don't think it was ferment volume that busted me.

Good luck.

I believe I can pitch extremely close to 58° and maintain 48° without any issue what-so-ever.

petep1980 said:

I believe I can pitch extremely close to 58° and maintain 48° without any issue what-so-ever.

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You got a much nicer controller than mine. I would take the first one up to the weld line at the top. Really.

I plan to cool 3 gallon wort with my coil to close to 60° (I should be able to get close), then I have 1 gallon nearly ice cold to top off, then will pitch onto my starter. This really should have me in the mid to high 50s I figure. My kegger temp will be around 48° - 50° which is serving temp for my ales, so I can just stick the corny in there. I'm sure it'll warm up a little, but obviously it won't breach the top end of the fermentation range.

I'll primary until the keg for my ale is empty, then sanitize that and rack into that keg and turn the temp down to near freezing, and sit and wait.......