Very good point. My 5 gal batches which don't get a full liquid purge are almost always light lagers. When I make anything dark or hoppy I do 3 gal into a 3 gal keg and they get the full liquid purge (or pretty darn close). Maybe I've just been getting lucky with the big batches, they get drunk...
Mostly because one time I ran out of sanitizer and figured I'd see what happened if I didn't do a full liquid purge. I couldn't taste a difference in the beer so I started just using however much sanitizer I had on hand at the time which tends to be more like 2 or 3 gallons instead of 5...
Fill about half full with sanitizer, put on gas at about 8 psi and pump out all the sanitizer via a picnic tap. Then fill them up with just CO2 to about 8 psi, shut off the gas, pull the prv, repeat the gas purge about 3 or 4 times.
Just out of curiosity, why would this need to be done with 100% liquid?
I purge my kegs with just CO2 before filling them via a closed transfer and haven't had any problems I can detect. Is the 100% liquid purge something you need to do when doing a partial fill of a keg?
Recipe has three hops, a single malt, and two decoctions so it doesn’t match either of your options. I don’t think the recipe is relevant to the question of carbonation during or after maturation in any case.
Yeah, I usually spund at about 10 psi in the fermentor for the last few points of gravity. For this recipe I want to follow their process as close as I can the first time. If I like it I’ll probably tweak a bit on the next batch based on what seems to work for me on other recipes.
I’m currently fermenting a Weihenstephaner Helles clone recipe that calls for the following ferment/condition/lager schedule:
Ferment at 50F to FG
Transfer to secondary (for me, a keg) and condition at 45F for 10 days
Lager at 32F for 30 days
Carbonate
I don’t have the ability to do the true...
I’m a lot less active here than I used to be but I stumbled on this thread and am sad to hear the news. I enjoyed his humor and crazy malting and abv experiments. RIP.