Fermenting in a cornie

Have any of you tried fermenting a batch of beer in a cornie? How about secondary? Just curious.... I could fit more cornies in my fridge than carboys, so I can brew more

I haven't doe it yet but... I have a plastic corney lid that I intend to drill out a bung hole in so I can put a stopper and airlock in. That would be the first thing you'd need to work out in order to ferment in a corney.

I don't intend to do primary fermentation in a corney-- not enough head space-- but secondary is what I wanted to do.

I almost always use cornies for settling, but not for fermenting. They are only 5 gallons, you'd lose too much of the batch to blowoff and trub. I guess if you had a tall enough fridge and could weld stainless, you could make 7 gallon cornies out of two kegs and use them. Weld the leftovers back together & you have 3 gallon party kegs!

david_42 said:

I almost always use cornies for settling, but not for fermenting.

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So when do you usually rack to a corny? How long do you leave it?

Thanks.

I rack three or four days after fermentation is done. Most of the time, there is not much trub in the cornie and I don't rack it again. If you want to bottle give it the same amount of time you would normally. You could move it to a bottling bucket by applying a few psi and draining into a pitcher until it runs clear.

david_42 said:

I rack three or four days after fermentation is done. Most of the time, there is not much trub in the cornie and I don't rack it again. If you want to bottle give it the same amount of time you would normally. You could move it to a bottling bucket by applying a few psi and draining into a pitcher until it runs clear.

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Is that straight from a primary or are you doing a secondary?

EdWort said:

Is that straight from a primary or are you doing a secondary?

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sounds to me like he is going from primary to the Corny for secondary/ serving. This sounds a lot like the commercial breweries who are turning batches around every week or two. There is no real conditioning time involved.

I go straight from the primary into the cornie. Then it conditions for 4-8 weeks depending on how fast I'm drinking. I rarely rack a second time, but when I do I'm probably filtering the ale as well. Some ales just won't settle.

I like the welding idea - you could easily purge the inside of the kegs with argon for backgassing and use some 309 rod with a TIG machine. I don't want to sacrifice my only two kegs for the experiment, but it might be fun to try sometime.

david_42 said:

I go straight from the primary into the cornie. Then it conditions for 4-8 weeks depending on how fast I'm drinking. I rarely rack a second time, but when I do I'm probably filtering the ale as well. Some ales just won't settle.

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David, you don't have any problems with sediment coming out of the corny? Do you give it a little longer in the primary?

Sometimes the first pint has a little sediment, generally not much. If the second pint isn't clear, I'll filter. That's maybe one out of ten batches.

OK, this is what my demented head came up with: I want to try to ferment in a 5gl cornie. If I seal it up as if I were ready to serve, when the fermentation started, the Kreusen would have no where to go, so it would just create pressure in the keg. If I release some pressure each day (by hooking up a line to the gas-in and letting it shoot out) I should be able to let it go to completion. I can then push the beer out into another keg for secondary. What do you think? Am I totally nuts here??

You need to let the Co2 expell freely or else the yeast will suffocate. Plus if you forget to release the pressure you could have a bomb on your hands...