Cold Crash in keg question

A 2 oz dry hopped APA I brewed didn't start with the yeast I added, so I added some US-05 and it now is (almost) finished.

I've been doing primary only (3-4 weeks) and then cold crashing in primary in the garage or outside, sometimes with and sometimes without gelatin. Works great, clear beer, although I've been known to suck up a few hops.

But it just warmed way up and I can't get a primary into my small beer fridge, so I seem to have two choices if I want clear beer:
1. Clarify with gelatin and then keg,
2. Use one of the kegs as a secondary and cold crash in the small beer fridge.

I've never done #2 before. Should I put it on CO2? How much? And if so, wouldn't it carbonate making it hard to rack to the serving keg? I don't have a keg to keg transfer line.

Rich

I use a keg for all my vessels, primary to serving. You can definitely do what you are saying.

If you are going to siphon from keg to keg, just hit the secondary with some sealing CO2 and purge a couple times, then disconnect. The carbonation will hardly be noticeable.

BTW a jumper (keg to keg line) only costs about $15 to build.

Makes sense what you are saying about sealing only, then relieve pressure. Thanks. I only have two kegs right now, and both are empty, so I'll be OK this time. But I'm finally seeing why some buy so many kegs....

dkershner said:

BTW a jumper (keg to keg line) only costs about $15 to build.

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It's not so much the cost but the extra CO2 used and released into the environment coupled with the distance I have to travel to get a more frequent CO2 fill. Yeah, it's not that much in the greater scheme of things, but my autosiphon works great, and allows me to keep off the settled crap on the bottom without wasting CO2.

In carboys, if I need to move stuff, I use a vacuum transfer, but I think that'll collapse the kegs.

Rich

RichBenn said:

It's not so much the cost but the extra CO2 used and released into the environment coupled with the distance I have to travel to get a more frequent CO2 fill. Yeah, it's not that much in the greater scheme of things, but my autosiphon works great, and allows me to keep off the settled crap on the bottom without wasting CO2.

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Fair enough. My 20lber with $30 fills less than 5 min from my house has me thinking differently. I really don't think air exposure for a few minutes is that big of a deal, but the combo of not exposing to air and less things to sanitize, plus the added ease converted me to pressure transfers.

dkershner said:

Fair enough. My 20lber with $30 fills less than 5 min from my house has me thinking differently. I really don't think air exposure for a few minutes is that big of a deal, but the combo of not exposing to air and less things to sanitize, plus the added ease converted me to pressure transfers.

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Mine's a 5 lb tank. All that will fit in the mini-fridge. 117 miles round trip to fill. Or 60 miles, exchange only, and cost twice as much.

The more I think about all this worry of making sure CO2 is blanketing the clearing beer, my cold stabilizing is typically done with just some tin foil over the top on a 6 gallon carboy, so it gets some O2 exposure. But it's cold, and there is a ton of hops in there covering the wort. When done, it always tastes very clean to the last drop - no spoilage detected.

I think we as brewers are sometimes more paranoid about O2 exposure than we need to be.

Rich