Accidentally Carbonated in my Unitank

[philm63]

Ok, I know; that’s one of the things a unitank is for, but I didn’t actually set out to carbonate yet – need to learn about it and get a spunding valve first, haven’t done that yet. Problem is, I swapped out the ball valve and blow-off hose on my 7-Gallon SSB unitank for a CO2 hookup to put a little pressure in the fermenter before pulling a sample for a gravity measurement – didn’t want to suck O2 into the fermenter while drawing a sample.

I errantly left that setup in-place, and the next day I came in to check gravity on my sample and noticed close to 10 psi on my unitank gauge. Thinking nothing of it, I burped it off by loosening the TC on my CO2 hookup and foam started blowing out – YIKES!! Quickly switched it back and got the ball valve on and closed, hooked up the blow-off hose and placed it back in the bucket of Starsan and opened the ball valve. More foam spewed out and then bubbles. Lots of bubbles.

This IPA was at the end of fermentation, and now I have bubbles again! It has registered the same SG three days in a row, so I know it is finished. I normally give it a couple more days to finish cleaning up, then I crash it for a couple of days and keg it off so if I keep to my regular schedule, I should start crashing tomorrow. But it is still spitting out bubbles from the accidental CO2. I suspect I probably lost some aroma and a little beer, but it should still be a fine IPA. Just don’t want to do any more damage if I can help it.

Question is, can I just start the crash on schedule, or should I let it completely deflate before lowering the temperature?

 

[RPh_Guy]

It's ok to "crash" a carbonated beer.

 

[philm63]

Good to know, thanks. And now for the $64,000 question; assuming even a low level of carbonation is left in the beer after crashing (I change the blow-off setup to a CO2 setup to maintain around 2 psi while crashing), will I have issues during the transfer to the keg?

I'm used to transferring non-carbonated beer so I have not yet had to worry about letting CO2 come out of suspension during transfer. Or is it such that with what I believe should be a fairly low level of carbonation, it shouldn't be a problem not matching the pressure in my keg to the pressure in the conical? Just would rather wait until the beer has released all of its accidental carbonation if it means avoiding foaming during the transfer. This is very likely to be a really good IPA and I want it to make it into the keg with no issues, if possible.

 

[Beholder]

Good to know, thanks. And now for the $64,000 question; assuming even a low level of carbonation is left in the beer after crashing (I change the blow-off setup to a CO2 setup to maintain around 2 psi while crashing), will I have issues during the transfer to the keg?

I'm used to transferring non-carbonated beer so I have not yet had to worry about letting CO2 come out of suspension during transfer. Or is it such that with what I believe should be a fairly low level of carbonation, it shouldn't be a problem not matching the pressure in my keg to the pressure in the conical? Just would rather wait until the beer has released all of its accidental carbonation if it means avoiding foaming during the transfer. This is very likely to be a really good IPA and I want it to make it into the keg with no issues, if possible.

A closed pressure transfer into a cold keg should minimize foaming with added benefit of minimizing oxygen exposure and preserving you IPA hops aroma. I typically push at 10 psi into a 5 psi keg set with a spunding valve on the keg, but before I had that, I would burp the keg when the flow slowed monitoring the weight of the filling keg.