Closed transfer woes- any help appreciated

[NewJersey]

I have one fermenter (spike spike flex plus) and today I was going to brew a new beer and keg the other finished beer.
I took care for this finished beer. (Whirpooled hops and dry hopped in ss mesh tube). Also added a bouncer inline filter. Cold crashed for 36 hours @ 33° (broke the liquid filled gauge on my Blichmann spunding valve FML)
Anyways the receiving keg was filled with star San and I pushed it out with c02. Ready for beer. Hooked it up And purged the line of o2.
Hooked c02 to fermenter and turned it up a lil. Opened valve on fermenter and purged the keg a lil bit with the prv on the keg. Beer flowed for like 5 seconds and just stopped. I checked the bouncer and it was not clogged with hops/debris. Unhooked from fermenter butterfly valve and there was nothing blocking flow.
Repeated this process several times to no avail.
Abandoned the closed transfer.
Put the keg in the kegerator and tried to pour some off. No go. Took the poppet and diptube outta the keg and apart. There was nothing in there blocking flow. Cleaned it up and put in back in the keg and hooked gas back up. No flow.
In a bit of frustration I turned the c02 up to near 60 and waited a few minutes. Sure enough beer flowed and I thought it was fine. Closed the tap and released the c02 and turned serving pressure down to 12lbs. Went to make sure it was fine and NO FLOW.
repeated the super high pressure and it flowed again. Great.
Turned it down to normal serving pressure and NOTHING.
I called it quits there.
I should add that I fermented under pressure and let it finish closed and the gauge broke. The finished beer in the fermenter was definitely carbed.

Anybody ever have problems along these lines???

 

[Jag75]

Man that is weird. The issue during transfer could have been the prv valve. If you burp it it will flow but as soon as the pressure equalizes the flow will stop. The fact that you pushed out the star san but couldnt push out beer has me scratching my head . This may be a job for @day_trippr . Hes pretty good at diagnosing kegging and flowing issues .

 

[McKnuckle]

What were you doing to allow displaced gas inside the destination keg to be purged while beer was ingressing from the fermenter? You have to either keep the PRV open, or connect the gas line of the destination keg to a blow-off (or somewhere it can release). Otherwise you will quickly build up pressure inside the destination keg that equalizes with the fermenter, and that will repeatedly stop flow.

 

[Bobby_M]

The ideal way (the only way I would do it) to transfer carbonated beer from one vessel to another is to move your spunding to the gas side of the receiving vessel and set it to vent at the carbonation pressure. Then raise the pressure of the donor tank to about 5-6psi above that spunding pressure. The differential pressure moves the beer. The spunding pressure keeps the beer carbonated and non-foaming.

 

[eric19312]

+1 to Bobby's technique...works well for me

Also why did you have the spunding valve attached while cold crashing? No reason for it and just asking for trouble... You do want to keep an eye on the fermentor pressure when cold crashing. Probably if beer is carbed from pressure fermenting you will not need to add gas to the fermentor during cold crashing but you might if a lot of head space and crashing very cold.

 

[NewJersey]

My spunding valve is a Blichmann 1.5" tri clamp. Keg is a corny. I have a cheap ball lock spunding valve too. I guess I'll set that up to 10psi and try again next time.
The spunding valve stayed in during cold crash because I figured it was harmless and I could still see the pressure on the gauge.

Interestingly I could not move the beer even when I turned the gas in the fermenter up to 20psi
Also still wouldn't move when I held the prv on the keg til it was basically empty. (That was the point I basically gave up)

 

[mattdee1]

The physics of the transfer are pretty simple, so the answer to your problem must be simple.

I'm not really clear on how you're preventing pressure from building up in the receiving keg, but you can do 20psi or 80psi in the fermentor and eventually flow will grind to a halt if there is nowhere for the keg pressure to go. Put a short pigtail on the gas post of the keg to allow gas to flow out of the keg and it should flow no problem with even the slightest amount of pressure in the fermentor. I do it with just gravity.

 

[eric19312]

My spunding valve is a Blichmann 1.5" tri clamp. Keg is a corny. I have a cheap ball lock spunding valve too. I guess I'll set that up to 10psi and try again next time.
The spunding valve stayed in during cold crash because I figured it was harmless and I could still see the pressure on the gauge.

Interestingly I could not move the beer even when I turned the gas in the fermenter up to 20psi
Also still wouldn't move when I held the prv on the keg til it was basically empty. (That was the point I basically gave up)

OK I understand the spunding valve issue. I suppose you have been watching this thread long enough to know what comes next...where is your PRV safety? Blichman puts the PRV on their fermentation keg. Here is a pic:

Spike puts their PRV on their manifold. Even then they are reluctant to say it would be ok to put a spunding valve onto the gas post on the manifold. I think they grudgingly agree its ok...here was a post they made on the thread about the warning on this site...I say grudgingly cause that post is just vague enough to say something like we really dont recommend this at all but if you must...:
Spike Gas Manifold Safety Warning

While I note that the Blichman Tri-Clamp spunding valve has a ball lock post on it I don't believe you can put a PRV othat post. If the post got clogged by Krausen the PRV would be useless. You maybe could sell your blichmann spunding valve and get a Spike manifold and one of those plastic spunding valves.

All lecturing aside I a bit stumped by your actual problem. I struggled with similar issues doing closed transfers for a long time. Gradually I got better at it an now they are going well. I can't point to a single thing I did to make it better but am following Bobby's procedure and have been more agressive about dumping trub, yeast and dry hops (I'm in a CF15). I think all together I dumped 3.5 gallons from my last batch but did have a very easy pressure transfer on packaging day. Good luck hope someone else can spot what you are doing wrong.

Also wait a second. You hooked your Flex+ up to 60 PSI gas? That is 4x intended working pressure. I guess the whole discussion about PRVs and safety is not going to be in your wheelhouse. Be safe!

 

[McKnuckle]

Still not clear if the destination keg was being vented via the gas post or PRV the whole time that transfer was being attempted... Need OP to confirm that.

Occam's Razor

 

[NewJersey]

The physics of the transfer are pretty simple, so the answer to your problem must be simple.

I'm not really clear on how you're preventing pressure from building up in the receiving keg, but you can do 20psi or 80psi in the fermentor and eventually flow will grind to a halt if there is nowhere for the keg pressure to go. Put a short pigtail on the gas post of the keg to allow gas to flow out of the keg and it should flow no problem with even the slightest amount of pressure in the fermentor. I do it with just gravity.

I had a gas ball lock with a tube going into star San initially. That didn't work.
Then I was just pulling on the keg prv and that didn't work.
Trust me, I get how simple this should be which is why it's driving me nuts.
I wanted to blame something being stuck in the keg diptube, but after taking that apart and visually verifying there was nothing there as well as water from a sink being able to freely flow through.... I'm stumped.
Still don't understand why I can't get beer to pour outta this same keg through my kegerator either.
5 gallons of star San flowed out under light pressure.
One of my most aggrevating brew days.
During the end of the boil (I was brewing and kegging) my wife and all her co-workers were having virtual happy hour and she came by and I had to pretend I didnt start smashing all the stuff with a sledgehammer.
Laughing about it today, but still stumped.

 

[NewJersey]

Even with NO pressure in the keg it just wouldn't go.
I know this isn't rocket science I just must beissing something super obvious.
Fermenter diptube wasn't clogged either btw as when I gave up I just opened the keg and let it drain into the keg via gravity.
Foamed up some but was manageable.

I'd like to be able to do this trouble free in the future.

 

[NewJersey]

OK I understand the spunding valve issue. I suppose you have been watching this thread long enough to know what comes next...where is your PRV safety? Blichman puts the PRV on their fermentation keg. Here is a pic:

Spike puts their PRV on their manifold. Even then they are reluctant to say it would be ok to put a spunding valve onto the gas post on the manifold. I think they grudgingly agree its ok...here was a post they made on the thread about the warning on this site...I say grudgingly cause that post is just vague enough to say something like we really dont recommend this at all but if you must...:
Spike Gas Manifold Safety Warning

While I note that the Blichman Tri-Clamp spunding valve has a ball lock post on it I don't believe you can put a PRV othat post. If the post got clogged by Krausen the PRV would be useless. You maybe could sell your blichmann spunding valve and get a Spike manifold and one of those plastic spunding valves.

All lecturing aside I a bit stumped by your actual problem. I struggled with similar issues doing closed transfers for a long time. Gradually I got better at it an now they are going well. I can't point to a single thing I did to make it better but am following Bobby's procedure and have been more agressive about dumping trub, yeast and dry hops (I'm in a CF15). I think all together I dumped 3.5 gallons from my last batch but did have a very easy pressure transfer on packaging day. Good luck hope someone else can spot what you are doing wrong.

Also wait a second. You hooked your Flex+ up to 60 PSI gas? That is 4x intended working pressure. I guess the whole discussion about PRVs and safety is not going to be in your wheelhouse. Be safe!

60 psi was on my serving keg
On the flex plus I never went past 20 (as verified by the gauge on my c02 tanks)
I use the Blichmann spunding valve on my flex plus
I'm aware of the prv safety issues and might add one later.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

may not be the culprit but do you have your bounce filter in the right direction. not sure that would stop flow but just a thought.

 

[Jag75]

may not be the culprit but do you have your bounce filter in the right direction. not sure that would stop flow but just a thought.

Good thought! Dont know if that's it but all options need to be looked at . Sometimes it's the simplest things.

 

[NewJersey]

may not be the culprit but do you have your bounce filter in the right direction. not sure that would stop flow but just a thought.

That was first thing I checked

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

dang, i got nothing.

 

[Bobby_M]

Did you check the interior of your black QD for blockage? Also check that the diputube isn't bottomed out in the keg. You can cut the bottom at a slight angle to be sure.

 

[Punjom]

I’ve ran across the same issue. Needed to purge, with Co2, the serving keg beer “out” line. Hops clogged the SS dip tube which you cannot see. All flowed well after.

 

[NewJersey]

Did you check the interior of your black QD for blockage? Also check that the diputube isn't bottomed out in the keg. You can cut the bottom at a slight angle to be sure.

Did check the qd, did NOT check the diptube. Will do that