7Enigma
Well-Known Member
So I made the mistake of drinking a glass of Mountain Dew when I woke up last night at 2am.....and then sat in bed trying to fall asleep for the next 2 hours. During this time I had quite a bit on my mind. What I wanted to eat for dinner, work the next day, the primary fermentation in the basement...you get the idea.
So since I'll be transferring from primary to secondary in the next couple days, and since I made the mistake of boiling off quite a bit of water during wort-making, and probably didn't measure properly, I've been concerned about oxidation if my volume is low when racking to secondary.
All these fancy pressurized CO2 purging systems sound great, but I'm a hobo! I needed a cheap, effective way of purging my secondary of air so my precious beer has a shot at tasting good.
I came up with a very simple (and cheap) way of purging the secondary in a sterile manner. Now we all know ice and dry ice is not a clean substance, both can harbor pathogens that can ruin the beer, with dry ice having the added "benefit" of normally containing lubricants and such during the production of the dry ice. These obviously would not be great in the beer, and so we need a way of not allowing the dry ice to contact the insides of the secondary.
I had thought of using a small diameter aluminum can (like from those pineapple juice individual cans) and lowering it down full of dry ice to slowly evaporate and displace the air. The problem is of course sterlizing everything going into the secondary, and the slight but real chance of the gas carrying with it spores/etc. that could contaminate the beer.
So I pondered this at 3am and realized the best way would be "racking" the CO2 produced from the evaporation of the dry ice INTO the secondary the same way you would rack beer from the primary. So here's my setup (I'll have to get a picture at a later time so its easier to understand):
- small bottle to house the dry ice. This doesn't need to be sterile but it can't hurt
-stopper with WIDE hole in it that fits snugly on the bottle with the dry ice. I cannot stress enough that this hole needs to be wide. I did some testing with small diameter hoses and it creates an explosion hazard similarly to a clogged airlock. Depending on how much (or if) water is used to speed up the evaporation of the CO2 frost can develop in the stopper and limit/stop the flow of CO2. You've now got a bottle bomb that if allowed to build pressure could be dangerous. I make sure to put the stopper on snugly but loose enough so that IT will be the failure point and just shoot out of the top (Idiot Disclaimer: Don't stick your eye up to the stopper at any point :cross: )
- Sterilized DRY tubing that fits TIGHTLY inside this stopper. You want a perfect seal to make sure all the CO2 being produced is traveling through the tubing without leaks since there will be some backpressure from the....
-0.2um (micron) particulate air filter. A 0.45 or 1um filter would probably work just as well but the smaller the better to prevent spores and such from making it through the line. You should be able to find one of these at most larger hardware stores. If you can get them with a barbed end that's the way to go since you can just slip it onto the tubing.
OK, with your parts in hand cut the tubing about 2/3rd's on one end:
------ X --------------------------
Wonderful drawing I know. The ---- represent the tubing and the X represents the air filter. Many filters have an arrow ---> on them showing the direction of air flow. Put the filter inline so that the arrow is pointing TOWARDS the longer piece of tubing. The long piece of tubing is what is going to be INSIDE your secondary container, while the short piece will be connected to the stopper on the dry ice bottle.
So here's what you have now:
O==O-----X-----------------secondary
where the O==O is your dry ice bottle and the secondary is duh!
The only portion of this setup that actually needs to be sterile is the section of tubing from the air filter (X) to the secondary.
So now you go to your local supermarket and get a small hunk of dry ice (only need an icecube size piece since gaseous CO2 is much less dense than a block of it). Put it in a styrofoam cup and then another one on top (like 2 cups stacked together). You don't want anything sealed due to the pressure buildup, but want to insulate it as well as possible. With this setup the dry ice should stay relatively the same size over several hours. You can always get a larger chunk if you know it will be a while before use, but PLEASE STORE IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA!
When you're ready to purge simply place a piece of the dry ice in the dry ice bottle, add a small amount of water to get the dry ice evaporating quickly and put the stopper on. The CO2 produced will now begin to displace the air in the dry ice bottle, get filtered of any potential beer-spoiling baddies, and replace the air in the secondary with pure sterile CO2. Let it do its thing for a while (10-20 minutes as long as its producing CO2 at a good rate), and then simply rack your beer.
So this is a quick, easy, and cheap way to purge your secondary of air prior to racking letting us cheap-o's have the same sense of security as those with the compressed CO2 bottles and fancy equipment.
Hope this helps,
justin
So since I'll be transferring from primary to secondary in the next couple days, and since I made the mistake of boiling off quite a bit of water during wort-making, and probably didn't measure properly, I've been concerned about oxidation if my volume is low when racking to secondary.
All these fancy pressurized CO2 purging systems sound great, but I'm a hobo! I needed a cheap, effective way of purging my secondary of air so my precious beer has a shot at tasting good.
I came up with a very simple (and cheap) way of purging the secondary in a sterile manner. Now we all know ice and dry ice is not a clean substance, both can harbor pathogens that can ruin the beer, with dry ice having the added "benefit" of normally containing lubricants and such during the production of the dry ice. These obviously would not be great in the beer, and so we need a way of not allowing the dry ice to contact the insides of the secondary.
I had thought of using a small diameter aluminum can (like from those pineapple juice individual cans) and lowering it down full of dry ice to slowly evaporate and displace the air. The problem is of course sterlizing everything going into the secondary, and the slight but real chance of the gas carrying with it spores/etc. that could contaminate the beer.
So I pondered this at 3am and realized the best way would be "racking" the CO2 produced from the evaporation of the dry ice INTO the secondary the same way you would rack beer from the primary. So here's my setup (I'll have to get a picture at a later time so its easier to understand):
- small bottle to house the dry ice. This doesn't need to be sterile but it can't hurt
-stopper with WIDE hole in it that fits snugly on the bottle with the dry ice. I cannot stress enough that this hole needs to be wide. I did some testing with small diameter hoses and it creates an explosion hazard similarly to a clogged airlock. Depending on how much (or if) water is used to speed up the evaporation of the CO2 frost can develop in the stopper and limit/stop the flow of CO2. You've now got a bottle bomb that if allowed to build pressure could be dangerous. I make sure to put the stopper on snugly but loose enough so that IT will be the failure point and just shoot out of the top (Idiot Disclaimer: Don't stick your eye up to the stopper at any point :cross: )
- Sterilized DRY tubing that fits TIGHTLY inside this stopper. You want a perfect seal to make sure all the CO2 being produced is traveling through the tubing without leaks since there will be some backpressure from the....
-0.2um (micron) particulate air filter. A 0.45 or 1um filter would probably work just as well but the smaller the better to prevent spores and such from making it through the line. You should be able to find one of these at most larger hardware stores. If you can get them with a barbed end that's the way to go since you can just slip it onto the tubing.
OK, with your parts in hand cut the tubing about 2/3rd's on one end:
------ X --------------------------
Wonderful drawing I know. The ---- represent the tubing and the X represents the air filter. Many filters have an arrow ---> on them showing the direction of air flow. Put the filter inline so that the arrow is pointing TOWARDS the longer piece of tubing. The long piece of tubing is what is going to be INSIDE your secondary container, while the short piece will be connected to the stopper on the dry ice bottle.
So here's what you have now:
O==O-----X-----------------secondary
where the O==O is your dry ice bottle and the secondary is duh!
The only portion of this setup that actually needs to be sterile is the section of tubing from the air filter (X) to the secondary.
So now you go to your local supermarket and get a small hunk of dry ice (only need an icecube size piece since gaseous CO2 is much less dense than a block of it). Put it in a styrofoam cup and then another one on top (like 2 cups stacked together). You don't want anything sealed due to the pressure buildup, but want to insulate it as well as possible. With this setup the dry ice should stay relatively the same size over several hours. You can always get a larger chunk if you know it will be a while before use, but PLEASE STORE IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA!
When you're ready to purge simply place a piece of the dry ice in the dry ice bottle, add a small amount of water to get the dry ice evaporating quickly and put the stopper on. The CO2 produced will now begin to displace the air in the dry ice bottle, get filtered of any potential beer-spoiling baddies, and replace the air in the secondary with pure sterile CO2. Let it do its thing for a while (10-20 minutes as long as its producing CO2 at a good rate), and then simply rack your beer.
So this is a quick, easy, and cheap way to purge your secondary of air prior to racking letting us cheap-o's have the same sense of security as those with the compressed CO2 bottles and fancy equipment.
Hope this helps,
justin