CO2 Transfers

[Floydmeister]

I have some questions about using co2 to transfer beer from carboys to kegs. I'm looking into switching over to this style of beer transferring and I think I understand the basics but I'm not entirely clear. The whole point seems to be to avoid oxidation but wouldn't you introduce oxygen anyways by removing one of your carboy caps to replace it with one that has a racking cane? How do we go about keeping the unit sealed during this process? Also, during fermentation do you still use a regular airlock or blowoff tube in a starsan container or is there something else I'm missing?

 

[doug293cz]

I have some questions about using co2 to transfer beer from carboys to kegs. I'm looking into switching over to this style of beer transferring and I think I understand the basics but I'm not entirely clear. The whole point seems to be to avoid oxidation but wouldn't you introduce oxygen anyways by removing one of your carboy caps to replace it with one that has a racking cane? How do we go about keeping the unit sealed during this process? Also, during fermentation do you still use a regular airlock or blowoff tube in a starsan container or is there something else I'm missing?

If you swap the stoppers/caps quickly, minimal air will get into the carboy, due to the relatively small open area of the carboy neck. If you cold crashed prior to racking, you have already introduced more air into the headspace than a cap swap will, unless you took great pains to eliminate air suck back during cold crash.

If you have a two ported cap, you can have a CO2 line hooked up to one port, and the airlock in the other. During fermentation the CO2 should be off. Then when it's time to transfer, turn the CO2 on at very low pressure, pull the airlock, and slid the raking cane into the airlock port. CO2 will be streaming out the open port during the transfer, preventing air ingress. To transfer, increase the CO2 pressure to where you get an acceptable flow rate, while still being able to keep the cap on the carboy.

Brew on