Conditioning question

[Dave T]

Hi all, hope your christmas brew was amazing - mine was, chocolate English stout with a hint of vanilla and coffee.

I'm looking at a couple batches of Russian imperial stout, and it looks like they all need some conditioning, 3-6 months. Oddly enough, I am limited in fermenters, but have an abundance of corny kegs - can these be used as secondary fermenters / conditioning? I can blanket with CO2 easily enough, then what - just date and wait? Should I pull one of the connectors off to keep from pressurizing / vent occasionally? Does it matter? Just shut up and brew?
thanks

dave

 

[McKnuckle]

You can and should use a keg, if you have one, as a conditioning vessel. The bonus is that you can also serve from it.

Purge with CO2, fill with beer, pressurize to seal the lid, and put it whereever it needs to go. If it's in a warm place, you'll need a lot more pressure and you might want to monitor headspace pressure with a spunding valve to ensure that the lid stays put.

If you prefer to lager the stout cold, you can even place it in your keezer or beer fridge so it won't move til it's empty. Definitely do NOT vent, open, or release any pressure from the keg. The protective CO2 environment is your ticket to oxygen prevention and overall freshness during the long conditioning period.

You can even hook up a picnic tap if you want to monitor things along the way.

 

[VikeMan]

I'm looking at a couple batches of Russian imperial stout, and it looks like they all need some conditioning, 3-6 months. Oddly enough, I am limited in fermenters, but have an abundance of corny kegs - can these be used as secondary fermenters / conditioning?

Yes, they sure can.

I can blanket with CO2 easily enough, then what - just date and wait?

I would recommend carbonating them, so that the lid will stay airtight. Just hitting them with a burst of CO2 at first will seem to work, and then the CO2 will mostly get absorbed by the beer.

 

[NSMikeD]

technically my beers condition in the keg. After primary (about 2 weeks) , I transfer to a keg and purge with CO2 and put back in the fermentor (mini fridge with a controller) until I am ready to tap them. I'll cold crash about two weeks or more into the process and add a bit more CO2 to keep the pressure (I use a portable CO2 cartridge for this). I don't wait too long to cold crash to keep any nasties that might have made it into the keg from taking over.

I used to prime the kegs but for convenience stopped that practice. I'm confident. can keep enough pressure in the keg t keep the seal tight and I haven't noticed a difference in quality from natural carbonation.

 

[McKnuckle]

I'm actually working on a quasi-imperial stout now. It's "only" 1.079 OG but it will still require at least a couple months of time to itself before serving. Here is the process I'm following for your amusement:

First, I am purging the serving keg with CO2 from fermentation. When ferm is done, I will add priming sugar solution through the keg's liquid port using a one-way valve that I finagled with a funnel, picnic tap, and a short length of tubing. Then I will rack the beer into this keg. I will give it a blast of CO2 to seal the lid, then leave it in a warm place for about 3 weeks. I have a spunding valve that I can attach and remove periodically just to keep tabs on the building pressure from natural carbonation in the keg. I don't leave the valve on there, because it can leak and I use it for other brews.

Finally, once pressure is stable - carbonation is done - this keg will get moved into the cold to just sit there til I feel like drinking it.