Cold Crashing & CO2

[Whysomalty]

Greetings,

Typically I’ll dry hop in the keg or some kind of secondary fermenter. For scheduling reasons, I tossed the pellets into the primary and planned on just cold crashing to drop them out. To do so, I typically fill a balloon with some CO2 and attach to my standard blow-off tubing. It got me thinking...as I have two currently unused three gallon kegs that are clean: couldn’t I just ‘prime’ one of those at around 1 PSI and hook it up to my conical to prevent oxygen ‘suckback’, versus the whole balloon thing? For reference, I ferment in the SS Brewtech BME buckets. I’ve had balloons that weren’t inflated enough, they’ve fallen off, etc. I was thinking this might be a little more of a full proof design...

Just a thought - comments and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Dan

 

[Dgallo]

Greetings,

Typically I’ll dry hop in the keg or some kind of secondary fermenter. For scheduling reasons, I tossed the pellets into the primary and planned on just cold crashing to drop them out. To do so, I typically fill a balloon with some CO2 and attach to my standard blow-off tubing. It got me thinking...as I have two currently unused three gallon kegs that are clean: couldn’t I just ‘prime’ one of those at around 1 PSI and hook it up to my conical to prevent oxygen ‘suckback’, versus the whole balloon thing? For reference, I ferment in the SS Brewtech BME buckets. I’ve had balloons that weren’t inflated enough, they’ve fallen off, etc. I was thinking this might be a little more of a full proof design...

Just a thought - comments and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Dan

Can you just just hook your conical up to the gas line with a ball lock. I modified my large mouth fermenter cap and installed a gas line and dip tube to I can cold crash on gas and then close transfer. Maybe you too can modify your lid of the bucket for a gas line.

 

[day_trippr]

I do the same, differently.
The question I would ask of the OP is how do you transfer the beer to your packaging without a CO2 hookup?

Cheers!

 

[kevink]

You can do that, but you need to make sure that you completely purge the keg of O2 before putting the 1 psi in it by filling it with starsan and pushing it out with CO2. I would not do that, though. I recommend getting a low pressure propane regulator and connecting gas to the fermenter like dgallo said. Simple.

 

[Jag75]

Question for the cold crashers . Do you pressure up to say 5 psi or so then disconnect the gas or do you leave it hooked up for the duration of cold crashing.

 

[kevink]

You could probably put a certain amount of pressure in it and disconnect the gas, but that would require some testing or complicated math to make sure you put enough pressure in it that I would rather not do. I just leave my propane regulator hooked up the entire time. It's pre-set at 0.5 lbs which is perfect. You don't need any more than that. This method only uses the exact volume of CO2 that is required. No more, no less.

 

[Keith81]

I ferment in a regular SSBT Brew Bucket (not the BME). I got a Weldless Bulkhead with Ball Lock Gas from Brew Hardware (sorry about no link, can't figure out how to add one from my phone). It fits in the hole in the Brew Bucket lid (needs a larger o-ring than what is included but I told Bobby what I was doing and he sent the correct o-ring). Then I just connect my CO2 and apply 2 psi while cold crashing then remove the CO2 when down to temp because the Brew Bucket is not rated to hold pressure and Murphy's Law hates me and I don't want to over pressurize it.