1st time keg fermenting

English mild, 1.035 OG, FG unknown (broke my hydrometer). 5.5 gal batch, fermented in a 15 gallon corny keg with a small bit cut off the dip tube. 3 weeks at 62-ish (60-64 depending) basement floor with a sachet of S04. Just took the gas-in post off and stuck a 1/2 inch blow off tube onto the thread.

Transferred to serving keg today. The fermentation keg never moved an inch the entire time, and not a single bit of trub in the serving keg. Transferred with 2psi CO2, took about 15 minutes.

I'm never going back to using a racking cane or carboy. That was stupid easy - and no oxygen exposure whatsoever. Buying myself a refractometer and a picnic tap so as to make testing gravity easier.

How much did you cut off the dip tube? It seems hard to predict how high the yeast cake will be.

Standard dip tubes reach all the way to the bottom. I assume that means the end of the dip tube would be in the yeast. So it seems to me that you either need a shorter dip-tube, but you never know how short you need, or you actually suck out the yeast through the dip-tube first, and just separate the first runnings out until the beer runs clear. But it seems like it would clog very easy that way.

I definitely ended up wasting a little bit of beer - but I tried pouring the remaining liquid out to measure - less than 2 quarts. The dip tube came precut - the guy I bought it from had done it.

I'm willing to bet someone in this forum has a spreadsheet giving an idea of the volume of trub you get based on batch size, OG, and amount of pellet hops.

You will need a conversion chart if you plan on checking final gravity with a Refractometer.

I use beersmith for just about everything short of brewing salt additions, and I think it has a refractometer tool.

I am two batches in (2.5 gallon batches) fermenting in a 5 gallon keg and I really like it so far. I have kept notes over the past 2.5 years of trub that i used to figure out how much to bend the dip tube to keep it above the yeast. Hop bag seems to help too. I left behind a small amount of beer but brewed enough to fill my 2.5 gallon keg. Really easy

I always keg ferment, and the only issues I've had are some universal poppets being too tight and really slowing down flow when transferring to the secondary/serving keg, and sometimes not enough headspace on a 5g batch causing yeast to blow out the airlock. I always put the kegs in dish pans now because of that. Fermcap S helps too. Otherwise works great and no O2 touches the beer after aeration on brew day.

I ferment in Sanke's, but Corny's are a lot easier to clean. Consider getting a weld-less compression adapter and a SS racking cane. You can slide the cane up and down in the compression fitting (it has o-rings instead of SS ferule), and you can easily see the trub in the clear tubing if you go too deep with the cane.

I guess you can also always use a floating dip tube to drain the keg from the top down and just pull your hose when gunk starts coming up. Something like this doodad? http://www.shop.clearbeerdraughtsystem.com/CLEAR-BEER-DRAUGHT-SYSTEM-CBDS.htm