How do commercial Brewereis carbonate kegs?

[cpbergie]

If they have say 200 kegs to carbonate, do they daisy chain them all and force carbonate or something?

This came up as a discussion because I am getting a corny filled from a local brewery (Alesmith) and im curios as to what they are going to do to get me carbonated beer. Im guessing they will fill from an already carbonated Sankey keg.

 

[kvh]

I believe they have carbonation tanks, (they may not be called that) but they're large vessles they can pressurize. They then force the beer under pressure into the keg. I've seen novice fillers disconnect without turning the flow off, and foamy beer spray everywhere.

I think these are the same kinds of tanks that brew pubs dispense directly from.

kvh

 

[Bobby_M]

They carb them in huge kegs. In the microbrew/brewpub situation at least, they use tanks the same size at their brewing vessels and fermenters. In a brew pub, these are connected to their bar faucets. Filling another pressure vessel like a half or quarter keg is as simple as transfering carbonated beer between two cornies.

 

[gnef]

i believe they are called brite tanks?

 

[RichBrewer]

I'm also pretty sure some breweries take advantage of the CO2 produced from fermentation to help carbonate their beers.

 

[TheFlyingBeer]

I'm also pretty sure some breweries take advantage of the CO2 produced from fermentation to help carbonate their beers.

On my recent trip to Hobart, Tasmania I took a tour of the local Cascade Brewery and was told that they reuse the CO2 from fermentation to carbonate their beer. They had a pipe running from the top of their fermenters down to the kegging department.

 

[Bobby_M]

Yup, brite tanks. Here are a few used ones for sale:

http://www.nabrewing.com/britebeer/071404STIbritetanks.shtml

The 5BBL is only $5000.

 

[WortMonger]

yep, bobbym is right about the brite tanks/serving vessels. I worked for Hub City Brewery in Lubbock, TX and we would transfer from our glycol jacketed fermenters to the serving tanks and then carbonate once all the beer is in there with a carbonation stone (a really really big one at that). If we filtered then that was done in route to the server and then carbed.

 

[CrankyBeaverBrewery]

How do we do this as a home brewer.. But instead of kegs using bottles.. ( I hate the sediment and want clear beer

 

[day_trippr]

How do we do this as a home brewer.. But instead of kegs using bottles.. ( I hate the sediment and want clear beer

Carbonation caps and PET bottles.

I'm sure that's pretty tedious for any real volume, and it requires most of gear that you'd use to carb in a 5 gallon corney keg anyway (CO2 cylinder, regulator, tubing and connectors) from which you could then fill any type of bottle...

Cheers!

 

[CrankyBeaverBrewery]

so really say a bright tank is like a 5 gallon corny keg and bottle away ???

 

[day_trippr]

so really say a bright tank is like a 5 gallon corny keg and bottle away ???

Yup, really. You can even build a wicked cheap bottle filler and go town with it...

Cheers!

 

[CrankyBeaverBrewery]

is there any small machines or gravity fed options for homebrewers ?