Sanitary racking from Speidels

[jwbeard]

I'm planning my first brewday with a new 60L Speidel fermenter this coming Sunday, and am trying to figure out a few logistics before I pass the point of no return...

Namely, the fermenter juuuuuust fits in my 7cft chest freezer that I use for fermentation, but I am a bit wary of the thought of trying to get the damn thing *out* of the freezer once I've put it (filled with 13 gallons of delicious wort) into the freezer.

I've heard you can do pressurized racking from the Speidel, but am concerned that there will be no good way to sanitize the spigot at the bottom of the fermenter to make sure that it doesnt pick up any mold or whatnot en route to the keg. The only thing I could think of was to reach down into the freezer and attach the racking tubing, fill the racking tubing with StarSan'd water, and then start the flow of beer to flush the tubing before racking to the keg. This would put sanitizer on any point of contact with the beer...

Since I'm already racking with pressure, I'd ideally want to be able to rack to a sealed keg (kind of hard to do that if you have to purge the Sanitizer solution from the line first...). Anyone have any better methods or suggestions?

 

[Copbrew133]

I have used mine now a few times with a similar setup to what you seem to have in terms of the 60L fermenter and chest freezer. Are you unable to safely lift it out or just not wanting to? I lifted mine out, but that was my preference. One thing I do prior to putting it down into the chamber is to sanitize the spigot. No brainer right... but I also sanitize some Saran Wrap, make sure the spigot is CLOSED (again no brainer right...don't ask lol), wrap the sanitized spigot in sanitized wrap and tape it up. When it's transfer time i use a spray bottle of Starsan on the unwrapped spigot and attach cleaned and sanitized tubing for transfer to the keg. The keg is purged with CO2 after cleaning and sanitizing. Can't seal the lid on it because gravity feeding but there is a layer of CO2, hopefully, at the bottom that sits over the beer as it fills. I have used this method repeatedly when I used to use buckets to ferment long ago and never had any infections or issues from it. If you haven't tried pressurizing the Speidel yet, I might do that first to make sure it will (trial run with water). Mine had a slight deformation around the rim of the fermenter. Not enough to screw up anything with my method of fermenting, but something like that could be a concern in trying to pressurize it enough to push beer. I know that doesn't answer everything, but hope it helps.