From conical to corny under pressure

I bottle. I plan to keg eventually, but not quite yet. I'm also brewing 10 gallon batches now so I think it won't be long before kegging becomes a priority, but at the moment I don't have room for a kegerator...

I have a Blichmann 14.5 gallon conical and I want to condition in cornies after fermentation is complete so I can free up my conical sooner for the next batch. I'd like to transfer under pressure to the kegs. I'm trying to figure out what is the minimal equipment I need to do this. I want to defer the expense of faucets and manifolds and other dispensing gear until I make room for the kegerator.

I think I need the following:

- Some kegs. I'm going to buy 12 of them from CHI with spare o-rings and poppets.
- C02 cylinder. Cylinder exchange is easy so I will probably not pay premium dollar for a new one.
- Valve. I want to buy a top notch one. I eventually plan to have five or six brews on tap. I don't know if that affects what kind of valve to buy.
- Tubing for transferring from conical to kegs and from keg to keg. I won't be dispensing beer, just transferring. What size and type of line should I use for this?
- Quick disconnects - two liquid out and one gas in. The liquid out QD is to connect to the keg liquid out post to transfer the beer in from the conical, and the other liquid out is so I can transfer from one keg to another under pressure. The gas in is to purge the keg of oxygen before filling and to pressure transfer from one keg to another. What line connector type is best to use? Barbed or threaded?

Will I need anything else? Remember I'm not going to be kegging just yet, I only want to transfer under pressure from conical to purged keg for conditioning.

All you should need is something to get you from your CO2 tank and regulator to the top of your fermenter (it is pressure rated IIRC). Then you just hook up the racking arm or beer port to your keg via the beer out side and all you need is a way to bleed pressure from the normally gas-in side of your keg. Will you be priming in your keg or are you already carbonated inside your blichmann? I wonder because if so you really could just use gravity to go from your fermenter to your un-purged but primed keg. Same if you are force carbonating, only I would go into a purged keg for that one. The only hard part is transferring once you are carbonated, then you have to equalize pressure between your two vessels and stay cool on your temperatures or you will be spitting foam 3 gallons into your transfer out of your target keg.

It's not necessary to go to all that trouble unless it's just something you really want to do. O2 spoilage isn't that big a risk.
I have my conical sitting on an old sub-woofer and gravity feed into the open corny kegs thur the oval top. If you are really concerned about the O2 you could simply squirt a little CO2 into the open corny keg before you transfer. The CO2 is heavier than air so it would push the air out and provide a blanket of CO2 on top of the beer as the level in the cornie rose. Then after the transfer is complete, seal it up hit your corny with some CO2 & purge the pressure, that should push any air out of the pressure relief valve (PRV). I generally transfer after a week, the fermenting wort/beer makes enough CO2 to push any air out. I'll usually check to make sure the corny sealed after 24 hrs by pulling the PRV. I've never had a case of spoilage. I have a corny right now with an Imperial Stout that's over a year old. I let my BIL try some a couple of weeks ago. He was amazed at how good it was.

I use the barbed connector for the hose but either will do.

Not trying to talk you out of doing something you want to do here. It's a hobby, so if racking under pressure is something that appeals to you that's great, half the fun is making stuff like that.

I use 1/2" TPR hose because I like it and have plenty but any drinking water approved hose should do.


Sounds like you have everything else covered to me.

By valve I think you mean regulator, Right. Also I think you need three beverage out quick disconnects and some beverage hose. One QD from the conical to the keg and the other two are for one keg to the other (jumper hose). You could use the QD that you use on the conical and switch back and forth but I would just get an extra and have a dedicated hose for the conical and a dedicated jumper hose for the kegs. I do the same think you plan on doing and it works great.

Thank you all for the feedback.

The main reason I want to transfer under pressure is because my conical sits on the floor in my storage room. I don't have extension legs and no table or bench to put it on. I don't want to have to lift it while it is full to take advantage of gravity. I can lift it when its full if I have some help, but I don't like to. I just think a pressure transfer would be easier.

What is TPR?

Seems like there's never an end to the decisions...

Flare or barb fittings on the QDs? I'm inclined to go with barb because it seems easier. I won't even need to clamp the tubing with oetiker clamps for low pressure transfers.

Regulator. I want to think long term here to having six brews on tap. They come in various styles. One body or two body. One 60 lb guage plus one 2000 or two 60's and one 2000. 1/4 inch or 5/16 inch, flare or barbed or barbed with shutoff. Is the reason for two bodies so you can keep two lines at different pressures? Do different beers need different serving pressure? Why two different sizes 1/4 and 5/16 and which is best?

from chi- definetely new seals for ea keg, only get a couple sets of poppits they are usually good, I just bought 20 and only 1 had bad poppits but all the seals were rotted. If you bought them in july you should have gotten a free seal set with ea keg(july special)
go flare fittings- you can remove the QDs and take to the sink for disassembly and cleaning, and it makes line cleaning a bit easier.
regulators is preference but you should have one check valve for each regulator or line so beer wont backflow and damage the regualtor. Yes 2 regs allow different pressures, like so you can serv and carb at the same time or serve styles with different carb volumes at the same time.
diameter of gas line... cant really see that it makes a difference
diameter of beer transfer line(keg to Keg) well the bigger the faster.
diameter and lenght of beer serving line 3/16 diameter and about 10 ft per faucet. There are formulas for this but I'm not that scientific.
time to hit post and fill my beer.

thanks beerthirty - and I agree, time to hit post and pour a beer. Cheers!

5/16 is the commercial gas line and ¼ is homebrew sized. I have 5/16 in a commercial kegerator in my garage and ¼ in my basement chest freezer and I can’t tell which pours better. I think the large diameter gas line is for pulling multiple taps at once so if you plan on doing that get the larger.
I prefer the flare fittings but it doesn’t matter much. I would clamp the fittings regardless of which style you choose because it’s just not worth the risk of spilling beer. Also you don’t need to use an oetiker clamp just use the worm drive clamp from Home Depot.

+1 on the check valve for the regulator….I had to replace one so now everything has a check valve.

I ordered 12 kegs from CHI. I went ahead and got the gasket sets and the poppets. I understand that the poppets are often good and don't need to be replaced, but I figure I'll just have a bunch of spares if I need them.

I also ordered the gas and beverage quick connects with the MFL flare fittings. What kind of nuts do you attach to 3/16th beer line to attach to the quick connects? Do you use a hex nut like the one in the pic of this beer hose assembly? Also what is used for the gas line to connect it to a MFL fitting on the gas quick connect? It's a 5/16th ID line but I don't know if the fittings are a different size.

billtzk said:

What is TPR?

Click to expand...

Thermoplastic rubber. I orginally bought some for the hose between the false bottom and ball valve in the MLT & transfering hot wort to the CFC (counter-flow chiller) but liked it so much I use it for other things as well.

So you want to push out the beer with CO2 pressure rather than transferring the beer in a pressurized system. Just pushing out the beer is easier than the latter. You only need a gas connect on the Conical lid and a hose connected to the racking port. Put the hose in the keg and give the conical a little pressure. Now the beer should start flowing.

It’s a little more complicated to transfer under pressure (i.e. being able to transfer carbonated beer w/o it foaming up). For that you need a pressure rated conical and a bleeder or spunding valve.

Kai

Kai, my objective is to free up the conical sooner so I can brew another batch more quickly. If I had a couple of conicals, I'd just let it my beer condition in the conical. But I only have one and I like to condition my brews for 3 to 6 weeks after fermentation stops. That's a long time to tie up the conical. Hence my wish to condition in kegs.

You are right that I just want to push the uncarbonated beer out with CO2. I have a 14.5 gallon Blichmann Fermenator, which is supposed to be good up to 3 PSI. I'm sure I don't need that much pressure to push the fermented beer out to a keg for conditioning. Should be a piece of cake.

I was thinking at first that I should avoid contact with oxygen by pushing it from the conical racking port and into the the gas out QD on a CO2-purged keg, but as a couple of people pointed out, that is unnecessary for the short amount of time it'll take to fill two kegs. So I just got a length of 3/8th hose to attach to the barb on the racking port, and I've ordered a CO2 pressure regulator with a 5/16th barb and some 5/16th line to connect to a barb on the rubber stopper on top of the conical. Now I just need to go buy a cylinder and await the arrival of my kegs and regulator.

If I am hooked up to a keg filling it, I always fill through the normally beer-out side. Filling in the normally gas-in side would require the pressure relief to be pulled to allow pressure to escape from the keg you are filling (which in your case would still be fine filling in the gas-in side). However, why not just fill with the beer entering the bottom of the keg through the dip tube allowing any blanket of CO2 to rest on top of the newly introduced beer? Pressure has to be release to fill a sealed up keg wheter it be a pressure relief valve opened or a spunding valve, I just like to always use the gas-in as a gas-out.

I wasn't going to fill through the gas-in side. I was going to open the keg and drop the 3/8th hose from the conical racking port down to the bottom of the keg, then fill and then seal the lid and purge the headspace. If I can find a 1/4 inch FFL to 3/8th hose barb adapter (I'm sure they exist somewhere), then I'll probably fill through the gas-out like you say.

I don't understand, I wouldn't say to fill through the gas-out/gas-in at all.

I understand what you are doing and that will work fine, just make sure you purge good after sealing and before moving. Once you get set-up for it, I would use the same equipment I would use to serve the beer. I personally clean my beer serving lines and use the same serving line to fill my keg. I use the same gas lines as well. I use Sanke so I have check valves and things to remove to use the taps "backwards", but with Cornie's everything should just hook-up and work. I like this because I don't need both of my lines on my kegerator at the same time (2 tap kegerator) and I get to alternate cleaning the lines every time I transfer a beer. So, no extra equipment and I am sure to have clean lines.

I appreciate the discussion and explanations. Any confusion is probably my fault. I still bottle and I have no practical experience with kegs yet. I just know what I've been reading the past few days. Just ordered 12 kegs and a regulator, need to get a CO2 tank now, and I'm sure everything will become more clear when I get to see them and play with them.

It will become more visible once they are right there in front of you, just remember that if you use the beer side for beer and the gas side for gas you will be alright no matter what you do. I mean either as beer-in or beer-out and gas-in or gas-out. Counter-pressure is the only "work" when transferring beer from one vessel to another.

WortMonger is correct.. Pushing the beer thru the gas in is too risky although spoilage from O2 is low risk having the beer drop thru the gas in port is just asking for a problem. But like you said you'll see why when you get your kegs.

We are still going to hate on you for having that many kegs billtzk. You are a bastard!!! Plain and simple and will have numerous people green with envy, lol. Let us know when the kegs come in and you see what we are talking about. Oh, and ask for anything you might need anytime you want, we are very eager to assist. Beer tasting included, lol.

The willingness of people on this site to help others with all homebrew-related questions is what makes this the best homebrew site on the net.

I debated getting 8 or 12, but I figure they'll eventually start going up in price, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and stock up now.

That is what I am doing only with Sankes. I too appreciate the fact I can ask something and within a day get most of the answers I would ever need. I love this place.

Well, my 12 kegs from CHI Company came in today. The are pretty nice for used kegs, have a few labels and a lot of scuffs, but no big dents. There are a few minor dents near the top of a couple of kegs, but no dents in the middle. They look good. They were all still holding pressure, and they smell variously of root beer, pepsi, and so forth. They'll clean and shine up nice, I'm sure.

They left the poppets out of my order and one gas disconnect, but I caught Matthew at CHI just as he was closing up shop for the day, and he apologized and said to shoot him an email and he'd send it out first thing Monday. CHI is a good company to deal with.

I also got my regulator and hose from Beverage Factory. I bought a MicroMatic Premium reg. It was on sale so $2 cheaper than the price at MicroMatic.

Various flare fittings and Saniclean and PBW I ordered from Midwest came in too, as well as some parts I need for my Brutus 10 clone from McMaster Carr and Plumbingsupply.com.

All-in-all, it felt like Christmas.

Well then, Merry Fricken Christmas you keg dominator you!!! You are going to be set. Can't wait till you are b!tching about running out of storage spots to age your kegs, lol. You're really accepting of your new hobby/obsession now aren't you. I'm a fan!

I posted an illustrated guide to my setup here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=75794