Transferring beer to keg/secondary

This may be a silly question, but I don't want to screw my beer up. I am going to transfer my beer from the carboy primary into one of my corny kegs. My keg with my saison in it just got kicked, but has still been sealed and pressurized with co2 since it was kicked. Would most of you completely clean and re-sanitize this keg before putting a new beer in it, or could I just transfer this new beer right into it, since what's in there should be sanitary? (just a tiny bit of previous beer and co2). Thanks for your thoughts.

yes, clean and sanitize.

^^^ Yeah, what tally said....

Now, a large part of the answer to a question like this is....why?

I'm more likely to do the opposite of what someone says just to see what happens if I don't hear a reason.

Isn't it much more unlikely to cause infection than transferring a new brew onto a previous yeast-cake since at least there is ~6% alcohol in there by now?

GuitarGumption said:

Isn't it much more unlikely to cause infection than transferring a new brew onto a previous yeast-cake since at least there is ~6% alcohol in there by now?

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Well, there is also yeast debris, trub, and possible some hops debris up in the diptube. It might be ok, but don't you want to at least rinse out the trub and all that crud that's in the bottom of the keg?

What about when you bottle? Why rinse and sanitize? I mean, it only had beer and yeast and stuff in the bottles. The beer is over 6% ABV usually.

I can't think of any reason at all NOT to clean and sanitize your keg, but there are lots of lazy brewers I guess.

You have deposits on the inside of the keg and most likely a little trub at the bottom, around the edges.

Thanks Yooper. Your logic makes sense. I was just trying to add to my Relaxing and Not Worrying parts of homebrewing. If most folks were not worrying (for a good cause), I did not want to worry. As a sidenote, in checking out the keg in question, there was actually a full growler left of my saison that I thought was kicked, and it still tastes great. The moral: not sure, but this saison has aged well.

If you've already got your time & money invested in getting the beer so far along, why compromise it by not cleaning & sanitizing the keg? It's not that much more work. It seems like any time I've taken some shortcut, it's come back to bite me in the butt and wasn't worth any perceived savings in time....

Sanitizing is, what, 99.99% kill rate? I figure recleaning and sanitizing kegs between beers is taking care of that .01% that might have had time to grow.

Isn't there an article in Zymurgy where Jamil, one of the biggest proponents of perfection in brewing, opened up an old keg to find a maggot in it? Holy crap.

kanzimonson said:

Sanitizing is, what, 99.99% kill rate? I figure recleaning and sanitizing kegs between beers is taking care of that .01% that might have had time to grow.

Isn't there an article in Zymurgy where Jamil, one of the biggest proponents of perfection in brewing, opened up an old keg to find a maggot in it? Holy crap.

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Mmmm, urban myths, good stuff. As you said, one of the biggest proponents of perfection in brewing (and thus likely the most worrying, least relaxing).

Is maggot a new strain of hops?

If not I want to patent it. Nugget with extra massive hoppiness....

That's a bold assumption to say that someone who has attention to detail probably isn't enjoying their hobby. In fact, I'd say that obsessing over every detail is what I enjoy MOST about brewing!

Don't get me wrong, I love Papazian's mantra. It's Zen guidance for living life. But I found the more I took Jamil's advice, the better my beer became. And that's what relaxes me.

I didn't mean he doesn't enjoy what he is doing. I just meant he is at probably one end of the spectrum, whereas I have a friend I used to brew with that is pretty carefree about almost everything in the process, and his beer also comes out great every time.

Anyhow, nevermind. I always clean out my kegs anyway, I was just curious.

Clean and sanitize.

Nope.