Closed-system pressurized fermentation technique!

Dgonza9 said:

So the 1/4" inlet comes with 1/4" outlet as well?

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Yes. This is what I have as well.

Dgonza9 said:

So the 1/4" inlet comes with 1/4" outlet as well?

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Yeppers!

Getting ready to do my first filtering! Beer is fully carbed in the fermenter. Been cold crashing for 5 days. It's set at 32 and pretty clear already. Got my corny pressurized to 14psi. Sanke fermenter is pressurized to 14psi. Gonna just bleed a bit off the corny to get 'er flowing.

Got my .45 micron filter mounted, and ready to go! We'll see how I do. I'm just chilling the corny a bit before we start 'er up. Time for a homebrew. I hope there's no foaming issues!

Filtering has gone fine. Quick question, though. Does your carbed beer emerge crystal clear? Mine seems to be cloudy. I think it's because of all the bubbles and what not. I mean, there were few bubbles in the filter housing, but I think the carbonation may have changed a bit? Chill haze?

Taste is also different to me. Not bad, but I definitely think it tastes a bit different, again, could be because of carbonation changes. I'm going to let this sit at 12psi overnight and report back. I'm guessing I'll like the results.

Second pint is more clear. Not crystal, but decently clear. Plus I'm getting a buzz. LOL.

I have been getting cloudy beer the first couple of pulls off a keg myself. I think i am getting a slight leak around the gaskets in the filter housing or something. I need to do more research in what causes this, but I do know I have much less sediment in my serving kegs after filtering... but shouldn't it be zero???

My beer has been crystal clear with a 1 micron filter. Still has some haze after a 5 micron. I ordered several 1 micron filters today and I'm throwing out the 5 micron.

If your beer is crystal clear with 1 micron, mine should be clear with .45 micron. Must've done something wrong??

Can't imagine what. I just put in the sterilized filter into the housing and screwed it together. Gaskets should've gotten pretty tight. There's a clearly marked "in" and "out" port.

Wort, I bought the same filter as you. Maybe it's the filter? Ah, I'm pretty happy with it. There's no yeast and it's pretty clear. Maybe not "crystal," but still good.

Maybe it is the filter. It is on the cheaper side for such a tight filtration, maybe I need to up the bucks and get another one. Then again, it may be that I am using the filter post filtration to run the beer to the tap and it is full or something. As soon as I move and get my stuff re-setup, I will try my kegs without the filter on the taps. Keg to keg filtration only should be a good enough test to see if my problem is as simple as that.

Does filtering impact conditioning in the keg? I just filtered a beer that had been in primary for two weeks, then about five days of crash cooling. It tastes astringent to me now. Not sure if filtering impacts flavors improving in the keg.

Two weeks might not have been long enough for the yeast to clean up their mess from before. I guess it all depends on what strain you are using, and also on how much pressure you use/etc.... I am interested in doing many more tests now that I have another permanent house.

Nottingham.

Thing is, I thought beer was tasting pretty nice in the fermenter so I transferred. Had pressure at about 7 after active fermentation. Then ramped up to 17 after a week. Reached fg in 3 days.

There should have been nothing wrong with that schedule. Maybe the beer is just still green and that is the flavor it has right now. Wait it out and let us know how it turns out in a week or two. I always hate how the best beer off the keg is the last one off the keg.

I agree. It's still bright right now. If you can wait, leave it to condition in the kegerator and it will be fine. I brew 10 gallons at a time and use Cornys. The second corny is always better.

Quick update on my second lager on pressure. I brewed a Helles bock at 5psi for the first two weeks and ramped to 12 psi for another two weeks. I did this one at 48 degrees for a full month without a diacetyl rest using German bock yeast. I hit my FG and after tasting began to lager/mature at 32 for two weeks. After filtering with a coarse filter and pouring off a first pint with a slight haze, all pints are clear, perfect foam, and deceptively strong. For those who can pressure ferment in a freezer cabinet I definitely suggest doing some lagers.

Cheers

I know it may be mentioned in this thread or somewhere else but can someone show me a link to where I can find information on how to really clean a 15 gallon sanke good? So your not worrying all the time if you did it correctly or not. All I have is a carboy brush and some other ones.. Also, what type of stopper do you guys typically use? The orange carboy cap that has 2 openings? 1 for the airlock and one for a racking cane? Thanks.

There are many ways to clean. I use a sump pump in a bucket as a recirculating set-up. First I rinse out the keg using a drinking water hose hooked up to an outdoor spigot to get the big chunks of krausen and yeast out. Then a hot (120F) tap water recirc rinse with the pump. Then a 15 minute recirc wash with 2.5% w/v caustic (scrubbing with a brush half way through). Then a recirc rinse with cold tap water and finally a recirc rinse with saniclean.

I agree there are a lot of ways to skin a cat.

I use hot softened tap water and a little oxyclean, shake the crap out of the keg, let it sit for 30-60 min, then rinse, starsan and pressurize.

dstar26t said:

There are many ways to clean. I use a sump pump in a bucket as a recirculating set-up. First I rinse out the keg using a drinking water hose hooked up to an outdoor spigot to get the big chunks of krausen and yeast out. Then a hot (120F) tap water recirc rinse with the pump. Then a 15 minute recirc wash with 2.5% w/v caustic (scrubbing with a brush half way through). Then a recirc rinse with cold tap water and finally a recirc rinse with saniclean.

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Thanks guys, where did you get that brush? Looks pretty heavy duty.

Dgonza9 said:

Does filtering impact conditioning in the keg? I just filtered a beer that had been in primary for two weeks, then about five days of crash cooling. It tastes astringent to me now. Not sure if filtering impacts flavors improving in the keg.

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Beer was just green. Tastes amazing now.

pola0502ds said:

Thanks guys, where did you get that brush? Looks pretty heavy duty.

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It a toilet brush screwed onto all-thread with vinyl tubing over the all-thread. Works way better than a carboy brush.

So, the orange carboy caps that you guys use for your airlock on sanke kegs. The orange cap I bought had a spot for a airlock and a spot for a racking cane. The racking cane tube has a little plastic cover on it and i lost it. Is there something else I can use to replace it?

pola0502ds said:

So, the orange carboy caps that you guys use for your airlock on sanke kegs. The orange cap I bought had a spot for a airlock and a spot for a racking cane. The racking cane tube has a little plastic cover on it and i lost it. Is there something else I can use to replace it?

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Not sure about a replacement part for that, but I think most folks on this thread are using either a modified sanke coupler or the brewer's hardware sanke fermenter kit.

Here's an old pic of mine. I've made changes, but you get the idea.



You'll need one of these. I got mine at Midwest Brewing.



Of course, Carboy cap apparently works as well.

WortMonger said:

Maybe it is the filter. It is on the cheaper side for such a tight filtration, maybe I need to up the bucks and get another one. Then again, it may be that I am using the filter post filtration to run the beer to the tap and it is full or something. As soon as I move and get my stuff re-setup, I will try my kegs without the filter on the taps. Keg to keg filtration only should be a good enough test to see if my problem is as simple as that.

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Wort, did you ever get another filter? I'm not sure what to buy. Gonna try a disposable one at 1 micron to see if I note any difference between that and my first experience.

Dgonza9 said:

Wort, did you ever get another filter? I'm not sure what to buy. Gonna try a disposable one at 1 micron to see if I note any difference between that and my first experience.

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I bought 4 1 micron filters from USwatersystems and used the first one this week. It seemed to work very well. We'll see.

I have been using a blow off tube for 48 hours then putting on the S valve and closing it. I wait until the pressure builds up to over 15, then shake the keg a bunch and bleed it down to 15. Every time I walk by my fermentation fridge in the garage I repeat. I take a gravity sample every couple of days and when I'm close to the FG, just close the valve and let her pressure up to about 2.4 vol CO2.

I did that with The Furious for a week then filtered it into 3 cornies. This time I bought 3 5 gallon paint mesh bags. The ones guys are using for a hop spider during the boil. I put my dry hops into each of these sanitized bags, roll and twist the top closed and seal it up with a sanitized wire tie.

I am hoping this method will keep the hops from blocking the dip tube. My last experience dry hopping with this recipe was less than desirable.

I'll keep you updated on how things go.

I brewed up 10 gallons of a kolsch last night with a nice, big starter. There was no pressure this morning when I left. I thought I had the spund valve wide open, well, whoops. It was closed. Came home later and found the pressure at 45 psi!!

I'm slowly bleeding the pressure down. Hopefully this won't harm the beer too much. Anyone with experience with pressure this high?

Time for a homebrew.

Dgonza9 said:

I brewed up 10 gallons of a kolsch last night with a nice, big starter. There was no pressure this morning when I left. I thought I had the spund valve wide open, well, whoops. It was closed. Came home later and found the pressure at 45 psi!!

I'm slowly bleeding the pressure down. Hopefully this won't harm the beer too much. Anyone with experience with pressure this high?

Time for a homebrew.

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I accidentally got mine to 60 psi one time which is the max recommended pressure for a sankey. It took me 4 hours to slowly depressurize back down to 0. The beer/yeast were fine.

Keg Bomb Kolsch!! :rockin:

cmuench said:

I accidentally got mine to 60 psi one time which is the max recommended pressure for a sankey. It took me 4 hours to slowly depressurize back down to 0. The beer/yeast were fine.

Keg Bomb Kolsch!! :rockin:

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I'm liking the name! Brewed this for a golf outing so I hope it turns out well. Every brew has it's own story.

cmuench said:

I accidentally got mine to 60 psi one time which is the max recommended pressure for a sankey. It took me 4 hours to slowly depressurize back down to 0. The beer/yeast were fine.

Keg Bomb Kolsch!! :rockin:

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How do you slowly do that?

pola0502ds said:

How do you slowly do that?

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Every 10-15 min release the pressure 10-15 psi and repeat until you get down to where you want to be.

I was concerned about killing the yeast going from 60-0 quickly.

Wanted to show everyone my closed system fermentation rig. Maybe a little overkill but so far I've had great success.
I found the the perlick lo-boy taps have a 1/8" NPT hose barbs with can be unscrewed and replaced with hard mount connections.

*edit: resize image

Do you have a bigger image available? I can't quite make this one out. ಠ_ಠ

Seriously though, what is the part you used to connect to the keg?

EDIT: Ah, just realized that's the perlick lo-boy tap.

Wow, that is a sweet setup. Love the lo-boy tap. I need to try one of those out. Is that water vapor in the filter prior to the pressure and relief valve? Also, why the extra line and valve prior to the filter and relief valve? Just curious as to what you use this for? One last question, how full is the fermentor? Have you tried it full enough to catch krausen in the filter?

The extra line is there to hold the filter and valve up and on top of the keg. I wanted to be able to pick the whole assembly up put it in a keezer/fermentation chamber without a bunch of soft dangly parts extending outside the top of the keg.

I used the extra relief valve and filter because I was maybe a little too concerned about the back pressure valve becoming clogged and not relieving pressure. The first ferment I was having visions of the bottom blowing off and the keg going through the roof.. anyways - the extra valve is also useful if after the cold crash, the pressure it too low to transfer. If the keg comes out of the chiller with very low pressure I can attach a co2 tube and pump the pressure up to 12-15 psi again.

There is about 8 gallons in this one which is about my maximum batch size, and I've never gotten anything other than condensed water in the filter. I'm hoping to move up to 14/15 gal batches and see what happens.

I can't tell how big that filter is but I can tell you from experience, a 15 gallon batch will blow off a ton of krausen. I would be worried about filling up the filter and still plugging the pressure relief valve.

Just my $0.02

That was my worry too cmuench about the filter size for the application I would use it for. I would like it to catch the krausen for two reasons, to keep the spunding valve clean and to top crop yeast. I'm still thinking of a smaller house water filter for my catch-reservoir. I was hoping those lo-boys would stick up more for spunding use, but I think I will buy a couple for actual serving based on the picture. I think those are going to rock in my kegerator. Then I can use the lever lock connectors for transfers/spunding and have dedicated connectors for serving.

mda, I am going to have to steal your idea and add the extra valve pre-filter/cropper for several reasons (some you just gave me). That would come in really handy! Great job again on your setup. Hope you move up to bigger batches real soon.

I recently started having problems with snap rings popping off under pressure. Long story short, I decided to buy a brewers hardware kit.

I was trolling this thread and considering how I wanted to set it up when I saw this on Derrin's site:

Warning! This kit is designed to convert an American Sanke keg into a very nice stainless steel fermeter. This kit is NOT DESIGNED TO HOLD PRESSURE! Please be aware that THERE IS NO PRESSURE RELIEF VALVE in the cap. Do not use any hose or tubing clamps on any of the tube connections or an unsafe amount of pressure could build in the fermenter during fermentation.

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I seem to recall others using Derrin's kit. Can anyone chime in to discuss the pressure limits of his setup?

I just want to be able to carb up during fermentation, but on my last batch I left the spund valve closed and it got up kind of high. Anyone know the limits of this setup?

This is just another reason I use the normal keg stuff. I think his is just a disclaimer for legal issues, and I believe his will hold up to the pressures. He has a nice setup for sale! How have you had problems with snap rings failing? They are supposed to hold up on kegs that are already carbonated (and even on kegs that have heated up after being carbonated which are at a much greater than normal pressure). Curious, so please let us know.

WortMonger said:

This is just another reason I use the normal keg stuff. I think his is just a disclaimer for legal issues, and I believe his will hold up to the pressures. He has a nice setup for sale! How have you had problems with snap rings failing? They are supposed to hold up on kegs that are already carbonated (and even on kegs that have heated up after being carbonated which are at a much greater than normal pressure). Curious, so please let us know.

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I use the Mcmaster snap rings with the ears and the pliers. They have generally worked fine up to 20psi or so. But sometimes they are a hassle to get on as they seem thicker than the original ring.

Anyway, my keezer was full and I was trying to carb a hefeweizen. I set it to about 15psi in my fermentation keezer at 36 degrees. I went to grab a sample that night and found the ring had popped off 15lb CO2 tank was drained.

This happened a few times here or there, but usually at higher pressures. Lately, it's happening more and more. I have so much trouble getting the original rings out that I just can't imagine using them. Once the snap rings from Mcmaster failed, I decided to go with the with brewers hardware setup.

mda said:

Wanted to show everyone my closed system fermentation rig. Maybe a little overkill but so far I've had great success.
I found the the perlick lo-boy taps have a 1/8" NPT hose barbs with can be unscrewed and replaced with hard mount connections.

*edit: resize image

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What do you have in the keg opening there? That's not a brewers hardware kit. Is it your own creation?

Very nice!