Closed system / C02 transfers

Anyone doing closed transfers from carboy to kegs? I have yet to hear if that improved their beer or not. I'm going to be trying later this week.

Closed transfer against counter pressure (CO2 - not air!) is a definite plus for long term beer stability but I'm guessing it would be tough to do from a carboy. How would you develop/hold pressure and how would you ensure you are not exceeding safe levels for the carboy? They are not pressure vessels.

Folks use those carboy caps and racking wand to seal the carboy. I've never done this, nor would I for fear of injury from cracking the carboy even at 1-2 psi.

But, I guess that you could theoretically, use co2 at low psi to initiate a siphon, then could fill the neck with co2 without pressure to provide a "blanket" of co2" somehow, perhaps by removing the carboy cap leaving the racking cane in one port?

I can do from conical with a MFL to NPT adapter full coupling and TC adapter affixed to blow off port.

TD

Do all my transferd like this. Pressure so low it doesn't show on the gauge. Just enough to replace the beer leaving the carboy.

Even if the regulator fails, the carboy cap will pop off before the glass will break.

Anyone doing closed transfers from carboy to kegs?

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Of course. Carboy to keg, keg to keg, carboy to carboy.
Heck, we even cold-crash under CO2.
It's all good! :rockin:

Does it make a difference?
Well, I'm not sure, the beer has always been pretty darned good just by avoiding the obvious handling pratfalls.
But it does preclude the potential down-side of oxygen exposure (like, when your trusty autosiphon decided today's the day it's gonna suck hella amounts of air).
That alone makes it worth it to me, one fewer thing to worry about...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

But it does preclude the potential down-side of oxygen exposure (like, when your trusty autosiphon decided today's the day it's gonna suck hella amounts of air).

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See that's where I feel like I am introducing some air. Even when racking to a keg seems fairly smooth, later on I can taste some oxidation when compared to a commercial beer. It's really hard to pick out on it's own, but up next to commercial brew, it's pretty apparent.

I just did my first carboy to carboy and carboy to keg transfer doing this method. I'm hoping that I will be able to notice the difference a little, but we will wait and see.

I've been wanting to rigup a closed transfer system for a while now, day trippr has a nice looking setup going on, think I will copy his

tally350z said:

I just did my first carboy to carboy and carboy to keg transfer doing this method. I'm hoping that I will be able to notice the difference a little, but we will wait and see.

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I imagine keeping the beer under co2 throughout its life will always be good for it, how exactly did you connect the gas to the carboy?

day_trippr said:

Of course. Carboy to keg, keg to keg, carboy to carboy.
Heck, we even cold-crash under CO2.
It's all good! :rockin:

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Thanks for the pics trippr! The third to the last, I'd imagine those carboys are cold crashing?

BreezyBrew said:

Thanks for the pics trippr! The third to the last, I'd imagine those carboys are cold crashing?

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And what are the balloons exactly for? I have never seen that before. Looks like a nice setup.

nthammer said:

I imagine keeping the beer under co2 throughout its life will always be good for it, how exactly did you connect the gas to the carboy?

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I have a gas line connected to my co2 tank from the gas line with a needle valve and a brass barb that is connected to the carboy cap. I did it that way so I can switch the connection between carboy caps. I can turn on the co2 at the regulator to a couple of pounds and then slowly open the needle valve for a little better control.

My method's pretty similar, though I use better bottles as to avoid the risk of breakage.

BreezyBrew said:

Thanks for the pics trippr! The third to the last, I'd imagine those carboys are cold crashing?

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Yup. Looks like just starting the crash...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

Of course. Carboy to keg, keg to keg, carboy to carboy.
Heck, we even cold-crash under CO2.
It's all good! :rockin:

Does it make a difference?
Well, I'm not sure, the beer has always been pretty darned good just by avoiding the obvious handling pratfalls.
But it does preclude the potential down-side of oxygen exposure (like, when your trusty autosiphon decided today's the day it's gonna suck hella amounts of air).
That alone makes it worth it to me, one fewer thing to worry about...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I like all of this! Good work

Is that you cold crashing in one of those last pics? I'm guessing you just slowly turn the gas on until the balloon stands at attention then just walk away?

Also, does that little filter with the washer weight on your racking cane ever clog up? Do you dry hop and let them free float?

popquizkid said:

And what are the balloons exactly for? I have never seen that before. Looks like a nice setup.

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They are the gas pressure equivalent of electrical fuses.

I'm clearly a bit whack but not completely crazy I put those in the system to preclude the biggest bottle grenade ever from happening in case something goes wrong.

Dry tested a couple of samples of that particular balloon type (a couple dozen in the bag for a couple of bucks) with the carboy covered in welding blankets and blew 'em up. It was actually pretty exciting the first time

[edit/added]

thekraken said:

I like all of this! Good work

Is that you cold crashing in one of those last pics? I'm guessing you just slowly turn the gas on until the balloon stands at attention then just walk away?

Also, does that little filter with the washer weight on your racking cane ever clog up? Do you dry hop and let them free float?

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Yes, I believe I had just kicked off the crash on those batches.
I set the gas so the low pressure needle moves off the stop and that's about it.

That's a fairly hefty stainless steel washer that keeps the nylon mesh from getting sucked up the dip tube, and maintains a pretty good envelope in the mesh so it doesn't clog up. I have a tape marking the dip tube level that keeps the tube above the typical trub/hop pile at the bottom, with the washer dangling below - or usually, resting on top of the pile.

It works pretty well, worst case I end up with a few tablespoons of detritus coating the keg bottom when it kicks...

Cheers!

I am actually doing my first carboy to keg transfer using this system later tonight. In fact, it's a lot of firsts: first beer on my newly built all-grain system and first force carbonation after my first carboy to keg transfer. I know it sounds dorky, but I'm excited.

@ trippr, nice looking setup.

Y'all wish me luck tonight!

day_trippr said:

Of course. Carboy to keg, keg to keg, carboy to carboy.
Heck, we even cold-crash under CO2.

Click to expand...

What is the adapter you put on the gas post to attach to the carboy cap? Is it one of these NPT adapters or is it a little hose barb on the end?

i've done this. it's pretty scary with glass carboys. i turn the gas real low and just "touch" the gas line to the carboy cap nipple.

So here is what I ended up going with. The blue is the gas side, which will be coming from the C02 tank into 5x16 sized tubing. That tubing will then be plugged into the carboy cap with a 5x16 to 3x16 adapter (reducer) and clamp which I found at my LHBS. I was amped to see this part existed!!! Out is just the SS racking cane hooked into the 5x16 tubing (it's a tight fit, but will probably use a clamp). This is attached to liquid in keg post with a 3x16 input which fits the 5x16 tubing correctly.

The second pic is a SS racking tube racking cane filter from More Beer. http://www.morebeer.com/products/racking-cane-filter.html I haven't tried it yet, so I can't comment on it's effectivness.

Ready to blow my carboy up!

View attachment 1424442319319.jpg

View attachment 1424442330779.jpg

thekraken said:

What is the adapter you put on the gas post to attach to the carboy cap? Is it one of these NPT adapters or is it a little hose barb on the end?

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Not that adapter, but you're in the ball park.

Chicompany carries a pretty full line of post adapters, and which one you use depends on what post you have available.

I had a Firestone gas post, so I used one of these



then one of these



Add a nylon flare gasket, a functional poppet and a hose clamp, and you're good to go...

Cheers!

TrickyDick said:

Folks use those carboy caps and racking wand to seal the carboy. I've never done this, nor would I for fear of injury from cracking the carboy even at 1-2 psi.

But, I guess that you could theoretically, use co2 at low psi to initiate a siphon, then could fill the neck with co2 without pressure to provide a "blanket" of co2" somehow, perhaps by removing the carboy cap leaving the racking cane in one port?

I can do from conical with a MFL to NPT adapter full coupling and TC adapter affixed to blow off port.

TD

Click to expand...

I had a stuck airlock cause a glass carboy explode once... I was in the room and it was a scary experience! not you mention a messy one.

I just did my first closed circuit rack 2 weeks ago. I did it mainly for speed. Used to take 30 mins to rack a keg. I had my better bottle up to 8psi and transferred in about 5 minutes. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1424458043.632269.jpg

I felt like the bottle can take even more pressure so I'm gonna boost it a little more next time. Targeting 3 minutes a keg.

day_trippr said:

Add a nylon flare gasket, a functional poppet and a hose clamp, and you're good to go...

Click to expand...

Oh very nice. Been looking to do this for years to prevent air suck back but never spent the time to identify the parts. More stuff to add to the collection....

For those that are pushing with C02, how are you keg hopping? I couldn't really think of a good way to do so other than putting the hops in the keg before initating the transfer.

BreezyBrew said:

For those that are pushing with C02, how are you keg hopping? I couldn't really think of a good way to do so other than putting the hops in the keg before initating the transfer.

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Did keg hopping for the first time while racking using the co2. I sanitized the keg, add the hop bag to the keg, purge the oxygen, than transferred.

tally350z said:

Did keg hopping for the first time while racking using the co2. I sanitized the keg, add the hop bag to the keg, purge the oxygen, than transferred.

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Very nice. I didn't know if this would have a tendency to plug the dip tube. Sounds like you didn't have any issue.

Dip tube does not clog if you use a hop bag. I put the hops in sanitized paint strainer bags and then hang in keg using floss.

I attach the floss to the lid using a small hose clamp attached around the little vent "nub"on the inside of the lid.

day_trippr said:

Of course. Carboy to keg, keg to keg, carboy to carboy.
Heck, we even cold-crash under CO2.
It's all good! :rockin:

Does it make a difference?
Well, I'm not sure, the beer has always been pretty darned good just by avoiding the obvious handling pratfalls.
But it does preclude the potential down-side of oxygen exposure (like, when your trusty autosiphon decided today's the day it's gonna suck hella amounts of air).
That alone makes it worth it to me, one fewer thing to worry about...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Inspired by another thread I had an idea and wanted to run it by you guys. What about a closed loop closed transfer? Flush and slightly pressurize your keg with co2, attach a liquid line to your racking cane, attach a gas line to the other nipple on carboy cap, attach both these lines to the (slightly) pressurized keg, hit your relieve valve just enough to get the siphon started. Closed loop! Would this work? If so what would a safe psi on the keg be for a plastic carboy?

If that wouldn't quite work could you just apply pressure to the carboy from your charged keg, then manually depress the liquid valves plunger with a screw driver until wort is pushed to the end of the tube, spritz with starsan, attach to keg and let the siphon effect take over and boom! you got closed loop closed transfer?

I would normally just go test it out by my carboys are occupied at the moment.

(edit) Google says that a person can blow around 2 - 2.5 psi, and we can get the sterile siphon starter going... so there's that.

thekraken said:

Inspired by another thread I had an idea and wanted to run it by you guys. What about a closed loop closed transfer? Flush and slightly pressurize your keg with co2, attach a liquid line to your racking cane, attach a gas line to the other nipple on carboy cap, attach both these lines to the (slightly) pressurized keg, hit your relieve valve just enough to get the siphon started. Closed loop! Would this work? If so what would a safe psi on the keg be for a plastic carboy?

...

Click to expand...

Yes, that's absolutely right, and the best way. Purging the keg with CO2 is wasteful unless done like this: fill the keg with water/sanitizer, then empty it out with pressurized CO2. So you have a keg with 100% CO2 at 1 atm, and wasted no CO2 to do it! Like you said, feed the gas port back to the carboy. Your beer gets ZERO oxygen exposure. I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this.

I'm not convinced it's necessary, but for anyone trying to minimize O2, this is how you do it.

The main drawback is that you can't use pressure to speed it up. You have to do a gravity siphon.

SpeedYellow said:

The main drawback is that you can't use pressure to speed it up. You have to do a gravity siphon.

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Would this be any slower than a normal siphon? Transferring 5 gallon batches, usually only one in a day, it never occurred to me that I needed to speed things up. I guess if you had a lot of batches to package, one after the other, I could see it being an issue.

thekraken said:

Would this be any slower than a normal siphon? Transferring 5 gallon batches, usually only one in a day, it never occurred to me that I needed to speed things up. I guess if you had a lot of batches to package, one after the other, I could see it being an issue.

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Nah, it's no slower than any other siphon. And I agree with you, I too have never felt the need to speed it up, in fact I prefer it slow especially near the end.

So I attempted to transfer an IPA per my post a few back. Lesson learned: if your carboy has free floating dry hops you better make damn sure you have adequate filtration on the racking cane! Otherwise this works fine.

(See day_trippr's racking cane filter on page 1)

(Delete double post)

I quit brewing 10 years ago because the disc in my neck just wouldn't cooperate anymore with all the heavy lifting.
I finally got around to reinserting myself with a eHERMS setup.
The march 809's are really nice to have on hand after the neck reconstruction!
The reason I use the psi transfer method is to eliminate lifting those heavy
carboys, in the brewery. I can push the liquid up, just not out! So for those tried of lifting full carboys, I highly recommend this method.

SpeedYellow said:

Yes, that's absolutely right, and the best way. Purging the keg with CO2 is wasteful unless done like this: fill the keg with water/sanitizer, then empty it out with pressurized CO2. So you have a keg with 100% CO2 at 1 atm, and wasted no CO2 to do it! Like you said, feed the gas port back to the carboy. Your beer gets ZERO oxygen exposure. I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this.

I'm not convinced it's necessary, but for anyone trying to minimize O2, this is how you do it.

The main drawback is that you can't use pressure to speed it up. You have to do a gravity siphon.

Click to expand...

Resurrecting an old(er) thread here. Is this as simple as it sounds in regards to a closed loop transfer? Couple of questions while reading this...

1. The beer line going from the racking cane to the keg should be on the "In" post, correct or does it not matter?

2. In follow up to number 1, the other line would be on the "out" post of the keg allowing the CO2 from the keg to go back into the carboy, correct?

3. What's the most amount of pressure you'd want to have in the keg when doing this? I imagine you want it to be pretty low to keep from blowing up the carboy or does the pressure in the keg not have any effect on the carboy in this setup?

Thanks

Rob2010SS said:

Resurrecting an old(er) thread here. Is this as simple as it sounds in regards to a closed loop transfer? Couple of questions while reading this...



1. The beer line going from the racking cane to the keg should be on the "In" post, correct or does it not matter?



2. In follow up to number 1, the other line would be on the "out" post of the keg allowing the CO2 from the keg to go back into the carboy, correct?



3. What's the most amount of pressure you'd want to have in the keg when doing this? I imagine you want it to be pretty low to keep from blowing up the carboy or does the pressure in the keg not have any effect on the carboy in this setup?



Thanks

Click to expand...

1. The beer line from the fermenter MUST be connected to the keg's liquid-out post.

2. The gas transfer line MUST be connected to the keg's CO2 post.

3. Pressurizing the keg wouldn't make the transfer go any faster since the pressure will immediately equalize between the keg and fermenter. The only way to speed up this gravity transfer is to raise the fermenter higher and/or reduce flow resistance (by using larger tubes).

Here's a pic that may help. When I first did this I didn't have any rigid tubing for the top of the fermenter, so I cut off the top from an airlock and connected to that.

By the way, try googling "closed system beer transfer" or whatever. There should be plenty of articles and videos out there.

I should also slightly revise my comment above that filling a keg with sanitizer then pushing out with co2 gives you pure co2 in the keg. Some folks have recently claimed that this method will cause some oxygen to escape from the sanitizer and into your purged keg. I have no idea to what extent that happens, but obviously this process is still pretty good.

SpeedYellow said:

Some folks have recently claimed that this method will cause some oxygen to escape from the sanitizer and into your purged keg. I have no idea to what extent that happens, but obviously this process is still pretty good.

Click to expand...

The key to purging the keg with water/sanitizer is to:
1. Fill the keg as completely as possible to displace as much air as possible.
2. Replace as much of the water/sanitizer as possible with CO2 (or another inert gas).

With corny kegs there are 2 pitfalls to #1.
-First, the gas dip tube sits about 1/2" into the keg. This means any air above that point won't make it out.
-Second, the lid is a huge reservoir for air. The PRV valve also sits down about 1/2" into the lid so anything above that point can't be removed either with standard length gas dip tube.

The fix is to cut the gas tip tube to be flush on the inside and perform a fill as follows:
1. Fill keg as full as possible with sanitizer/water. Insert lid.
2. Open PRV and fill keg with sanitizer/water via liquid port.
3. Once there is a steady stream of water coming from PRV attach gas QD to gas port and close the PRV.
4. After a few seconds the gas QD will start to sputter and then will turn into a solid stream. With the gas side up, tilt the keg to 45 degrees. Rock back to vertical and back to 45 degrees several times until no more sputtering occurs. This will get out most of the lid air.
5. There is one last bubble left in the keg lid though and to get this requires a slow tilt from vertical, to just past 90 degrees, again wih the gas QD on the high side. Then slowly tilt back to vertical. You'll get one last sputter from the QD.
6. Remove water and keg QD simultaneously.

Now you have to purge it. The only real hazard to purging is getting as much of the liquid out as possible (because the liquid may contain oxygen). This means you need your dip tube to reach as low of a point as possible in the keg. Most kegs are pretty good, but if you have cut dip tubes you're out of luck. For standard kegs you can bent the dip tube slightly to ensure it sits at the lowest point possible.

If you used deoxygenated water this wouldn't be a huge concern (but even i have my limits as to what i'll do). The better solution is to rack at the tail end of fermentation with a few gravity points remaining so you can spund, OR prior to racking to the serving keg you can add the priming sugar directly to the fermenter. Once fermentation has kicked back off then you transfer.

Even if you have poor hot side oxygenation practices this racking technique will yield fantastic benefits. I've had some mega IPAs still be 95% quality at 5+ months. That's compared to maybe 3 weeks without this method.