Forced transfer via CO2 from Vintage Bottling plastic carboy

[blizz81]

So I attempted my first forced transfer this past weekend. I have the MoreBeer sterile siphon starter with the orange cap, stainless racking cane, and outlet port. Was using my spare CO2 tank to run gas into the carboy.


The orange cap doesn't quite seem to fit the Vintage Bottle wide-ish openings that snugly, but seemed to be ok. I started increasing the pressure slowly to see the minimum amount of pressure I'd need to get the siphon started. At somewhere around 3psi beer started flowing, and I gave it a couple seconds before I turned the gas off. The siphon slowed to a trickle and stopped.


Turned gas back on at a low psi again, started flowing. Let it continue for a little bit. Probably 10-15 seconds into this, the orange cap blew off the mouth.


Third go, finally got a sustained siphon with the gas turned off...and after a bit, the vessel crinkled some. And then it crinkled more. I took the orange cap off and it relieved pressure and more or less blew out back into shape. The siphon continued / finished with the orange cap removed.


So where am I going wrong with the vacuum that I achieved in the end? This was an already-creased fermenter that my buddy used too hot of water on to clean, so no big deal there, but now I'm worried about my other not-crinkled plastic guy, as well as my glass 6.5gal. The orange cap does fit quite a bit more snugly on the glass carboy.

 

[BeardedBrews]

If you leave the CO2 line stuck into the hole then the siphon will stop after the pressure is gone from the carboy. If you don't want to push all of it out of the carboy with co2 you can start the siphon with co2 and then pull the line out of the cap and let gravity finish the job.


I would just let the co2 push the whole contents.

 

[poptarts]

turn up to 3 to get siphon going then you just need like 1psi to prevent it from creating a vaccume

 

[blizz81]

That makes sense. I'm more dumb than a 5th grader when it comes to some science stuff, so even though it's simple, thanks for mentioning the "if you turn the gas off, you need air to continue and you need to disconnect the gas line". I'll probably just keep it on gas going forward, yeah (and give it time to equalize the head space at a low pressure, which is what had me blowing the cap I'm sure).

 

[leesmith]

You have to fill the empty void in the carboy with something.
Air, CO2, peanuts....it doesn't matter what...once you get the siphon started you have two options: pull then orange lid off a bit to allow air in or keep the gas on.
I keep the gas on because I don't want to expose my beer to oxygen. The keg I'm transferring into has been purged with co2 and the pressure relief valve opened just before starting the siphon. I transfer through the dip tube Out fitting into the keg.

I use a system much like this:
http://www.metabrewing.com/2014/08/avoiding-oxygen-when-kegging-co2.html?m=1

 

[blizz81]

I use a system much like this:
http://www.metabrewing.com/2014/08/avoiding-oxygen-when-kegging-co2.html?m=1

This run was kind of a test run as I'm not as concerned with O2 exposure for this beer, but will be for pale / hoppy beers (and once I'm familiar with the practice, will do the same for all), and will eventually be going into keg through the beer out.


Think all I need is to get a 3/8" barbed fitting on there, as I can't imagine cranking a clamp down on a normal diameter beer line will be sufficient. Will probably look to do the same on both my gas QDs (have a male QD on the outside of kegerator to swap out easily) so I can switch between QD and hose onto orange cap more easily.