DIY sankey "Kegmenter"

[apache_brew]

My original plan was to build a conical from a sankey keg, however since I got used to fermenting in regular sankeys with a floating dip tube, the lure or the conical dump has faded away. I've also switched over to dry yeast (500g bricks) and brew much less frequently so I have no desire to recollect yeast. The major complaint with fermenting in sankeys is the 2" opening and cleaning them. So my solution to that was a 6" tri clamp with a single 2" and two 1.5" tri clamp ferrules in the end cap. The beauty of tri clamps is being able to mix and match as well as compound multiple components from a single port. I ferment in an upright freezer and tape the Inkbird temperature probe to the side of the keg (covered with insulation). I like keeping all the keg modifications to a single top mounted port for the purpose of limiting modification to the wetted beer area inside the keg. I still need to grind, polish and passivate the inside of the 6" topside ferrule with Citrisurf, but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out so far. Looking forward to filling it with sweet wort soon. Prost!

 

[OleBrewing]

impressive. i was just going to use the original keg port and cuss a lot cleaning it out.

 

[apache_brew]

First time using this Citrisurf 2310 product. Picked it up on Amazon for about $40. Appears to be a good solution to cleaning and passivating stainless. After scotch brighting and buffing down the heat affected zones with compound, gave the tank a good cleaning with PBW before spraying the product. This variety is gel like and sticks to overhead faces nicely. Let it sit for 20 minutes and after all the magic has taken place, gave it a good rinse.

 

[apache_brew]

First batch in the new fermenter. 12 gallons of Munich Dunkel bubbling away.

 

[apache_brew]

Latest addition is a 1.5” thermowell that I fabbed up in order to slide the temp probe down into the beer from the top. Still using tape to adhere the heating pad to the side of the fermenter though.

Here’s a shot of my transferring setup. After the beer has cold crashed to 34F under pressure for 3-4 days, use a second keg as a brite tank to rack off yeast/dry hops and add biofine. The beer will hang out in the brite tank for a week or two with top pressure to finish carbonating until it’s ready for racking off into serving kegs. The brite tank uses the same floating dip tube and filter screen that the fermenter does.