Stopping fermentation in kegerator

[vandoogie]

Hey all,

I just got a kegging system set up and am about to test it with a cider. Since I'm not bottling I wanted to try to package it a bit on the sweeter side (maybe 1.010, depending on taste). I've looked through lots of threads over the last week and havn't found a clear answer to my question, but apologies if this has been gone over before.

I'm hoping to stop the cider fermenting without the use of chemicals, so my plan was to wait until it reaches the gravity i want in primary, cold crash and allow the yeast to drop out, rack to secondary, cold crash again to get out any yeast that made it over, and then keg it and force carb it, at which point it will stay at 40F in my kegerator and probably get consumed within the next month or 2 max (only a 2.5 gallon keg).

My questions are: a) will this method be adequate to halt / severely slow any amount of further fermentation of consequence given the timeframe, and b) if it DOES happen to continue fermenting in the keg under serving pressure and get's overly carbed, is there a method by which i could "let out" some of the carb, and what would that be?

Thanks!

 

[Maylar]

a) Yes.
b) Yes, and there's a sticky about that in the beer kegging/bottling forum.

 

[vandoogie]

Thanks Maylar. Would you happen to have a link to that thread?

 

[Maylar]

Sure.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=127655

 

[madscientist451]

Chilling the cider down and multiple rackings is a good method, you may want to do 3-4 rackings and not just two. If you want the cider to be 1.10 when you're drinking it, I'd start the process when its 1.015, and depending what your gravity is at the final racking, you could let it carb up in the keg. 40F alone won't stop the fermentation, just slow it down. If you have a separate mini fridge for the 2.5 gallon keg and can push it down to 30F that would be better. Please let us know how this works out.