I need to vent.

[Ridenour64]

Apparently the posts on the keg for gas and liquid are not interchangeable? Am I the only one that didn’t know that? The gas ball lock fits on both but the liquid ball lock only fits one correctly. I kept thinking the issues were elsewhere. A lot of time spent being frustrated by that.

Also, when pressure transferring from my unitank to my keg, my liquid ball lock apparently kept clogging from minimal sediment getting sucked up and into it. I had to disconnect my tubing from the liquid ball lock and just insert it through the top of the keg. It’s carbonated so it foamed all over the place. I just let it keep going though and the plan was just to rinse the keg off afterwards and clean a bunch of foam off my floor. When rinsing the keg off afterwards I realized I had forgot to re tighten the prv on the keg and water more than likely got into the keg. This blonde ale was to be my best brew yet. This was my first time using a DIY glycol so I was able to 100% meet temp control/ crash. Complete nightmare trying to get this beer into the keg.

Does anyone else have problems with the black post clogging during pressure transfer? What is the solution?

 

[Ridenour64]

I just found a possible solution on another post. Next time I will try remove the internals of the liquid ball lock and maybe even the spring / poppet on the post. So frustrating.

 

[Blazinlow86]

I just found a possible solution on another post. Next time I will try remove the internals of the liquid ball lock and maybe even the spring / poppet on the post. So frustrating.

Are you using a racking arm and cold crashing prior to racking?

 

[Ridenour64]

My unitank has a rotating racking arm. I am using that. The beer was at 40* when racked. It was at 40 for 8 days.

 

[passedpawn]

I just found a possible solution on another post. Next time I will try remove the internals of the liquid ball lock and maybe even the spring / poppet on the post. So frustrating.

Yea, you can remove the spring-loaded poppets in both the post and the disconnect, but in my experience they were so useful I put them back in. Hop debris can quickly clog them though, it's true. The sad solution is to avoid sucking stuff into them, which usually means leaving some beer in the fermentor.

Regarding the posts, if you start out not knowing the difference between gas and liquid, you'll soon figure it out. Sadly, I still accidentally get them mixed up and manage to jamb the disconnect on there. When I hear gas bubbling up from bottom of keg, I know I f'ed up. I wish they had made them SUBSTANTIALLY different. One thing you can do to never make the mistake: buy black and red o-rings for the posts. Make all your liquid posts black, to match the black disconnect. Make all the gas post o-rings red.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

I wish they had made them SUBSTANTIALLY different. One thing you can do to never make the mistake: buy black and red o-rings for the posts. Make all your liquid posts black, to match the black disconnect. Make all the gas post o-rings red.

I use a grey paint marker and marked a ring around all my gas posts.

 

[passedpawn]

I use a grey paint marker and marked a ring around all my gas posts.

Did the markings last? I tried marking my posts similarly, but all markings seem to come off. I soak in strong starsan solution when cleaning kegs, so that might be part of the problem. In particular, somehow I acquired a freaking set of Firestone posts. They only fit my one firestone keg. Gah!

 

[Ridenour64]

“Make all your liquid posts black, to match the black disconnect. Make all the gas post o-rings red.”

That is a great idea. I’ll definitely be doing this.

I realize that when I set up my fermenter, I have the racking arm pointing down and into the sediment, I forgot to flip it up which didn’t help at all. I just hope the beer ends up being fine. All of my samples were great and I was looking forward to this one..

 

[mirthfuldragon]

Did the markings last? I tried marking my posts similarly, but all markings seem to come off. I soak in strong starsan solution when cleaning kegs, so that might be part of the problem. In particular, somehow I acquired a freaking set of Firestone posts. They only fit my one firestone keg. Gah!

Been a bit over a year so far, and I haven't had any issues. I think they are Markal paint markers. I also don't drink a ton - I still have about a 1/4 keg of last September's wet-hopped amber sitting around. I don't soak the entire keg in sanitizer either. Generally though, the paint-on-rubber seems to work well - a couple of my kegs have yellow or green or blue paint on the handles, and that sticks well. YMMV.

 

[EnglishAndy]

Cable tie around the bit of the rubber handle nearest the gas post with GAS written on it has worked for me even at my most slow-witted.

 

[pvpeacock]

I bought red o-rings for the gas in posts. Red for gas and black for beer.

 

[Bubman]

Does anyone else have problems with the black post clogging during pressure transfer? What is the solution?

I use one of these when transferring to the keg. I also use a hop spider to minimise hop debris in the kettle.

Clogged popets S$%K

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CH2JSIY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Blazinlow86]

My unitank has a rotating racking arm. I am using that. The beer was at 40* when racked. It was at 40 for 8 days.

Not sure what to say in that case. I always leave my racking arm facing down but I crash at 32f first for 48 hours before racking and never move my fermentor. I also do a dump after the 48 hours and then carbonate for another 24hrs. I literally have never had any issues or even noticed anything in the connector when I clean it. the thing I would be concerned about with removing the puppets is if your beer is already carbonated you may end up having a big mess at some point. cheers

 

[crazyjake19]

Color coding the o-rings is a great idea. I would’ve done that but I’d already bought a pack of 100 o-rings before someone told me. I put white electrical tape around the black rubber keg handles on the gas side after I made the mistake once.

 

[Still Brewn]

I have 3 kegs that I can put the gas on the liquid side which I find very useful. I force carb them this way saving several days of sitting at serving pressure. I have one keg that will leak gas if I do that which sucks because I lost a just filled tank of gas earlier this year because I wasn't paying attention to which keg I was using. This method also makes shake carbing extremely fast without messing with the regulator.

 

[mongoose33]

Apparently the posts on the keg for gas and liquid are not interchangeable? Am I the only one that didn’t know that? The gas ball lock fits on both but the liquid ball lock only fits one correctly. I kept thinking the issues were elsewhere. A lot of time spent being frustrated by that.

Also, when pressure transferring from my unitank to my keg, my liquid ball lock apparently kept clogging from minimal sediment getting sucked up and into it. I had to disconnect my tubing from the liquid ball lock and just insert it through the top of the keg. It’s carbonated so it foamed all over the place. I just let it keep going though and the plan was just to rinse the keg off afterwards and clean a bunch of foam off my floor. When rinsing the keg off afterwards I realized I had forgot to re tighten the prv on the keg and water more than likely got into the keg. This blonde ale was to be my best brew yet. This was my first time using a DIY glycol so I was able to 100% meet temp control/ crash. Complete nightmare trying to get this beer into the keg.

Does anyone else have problems with the black post clogging during pressure transfer? What is the solution?

This is what I do, but first what I used to do.

I have a TC fitting for my unitank that has a liquid post on it. I have a double-ended jumper line with liquid qd's on each end that I used to rack to keg:



But what I found is the flow was very slow, and it wasn't unusual for it to clog.

So what i do now is use a jumper that has a QD on one end (to connect to the keg) and a Camlock fitting on the other end. I use a male camlock on the racking valve on the unitank, and what I've found is the flow is FAR faster then when I had a QD on either end.

But IMO what really makes this shine is that I can use a jumper post on the QD and open the butterfly valve and flush out the racking arm of trub and such, in other words, clearing the line. I just point it into a pitcher until the line runs clear, takes maybe a cup or two of liquid, not much. Doing that also flushes out the air, such that I have a line full of beer and purged of air. I remove the jumper, attach to the keg, and away I go.

I use a spunding valve on the keg to balance the pressures. My beer is partially carbed (maybe 7psi), so I attach a CO2 line to the unitank, set it at about 12 psi or so, then let it go. Takes maybe 5 minutes to rack the entire 5 gallons to the keg.

Here's the revised jumper:



Here's the jumper post, which you can get from brewhardware.com:



Finally here's how it looks in action: