Well, I’ve been fermenting in converted Sanke kegs for a couple of years now, and have had nothing but success. Until now.
Being able to keep as much O2 out of the fermentation, and being able to transfer to a purged keg has (IMO) vastly improved the quality of my beer. Not only that, the overall ease of kegging and carbonating has made packaging an actual joy! Who’da thought?
I originally started using a ball lock spear through my sanke fermentation tees, but I’d run into clogs quite often, and cleaning out a ball lock post poppet mid transfer was majorly annoying. So, I thought, why not just switch everything to ball valves! I had some TC to NPTs, some cam locks, and a couple of ball valves laying around, so I made the switch. Here’s what that’s looking like:
It’s been great! Much easier transfers to kegs with a camlock on one end of a hose and a ball valve on the keg side. Smooth sailing.
Until last night.
That’s some of the aftermath of a bumped ball valve pulling trub from a freshly transferred fermenter under about 15psi. [emoji23][emoji24] That sucker sprayed that from almost 20ft away! I got a good dousing as well, and got to scrub down my garage late into the night. Good times!
All’s well that ends well, though. Didn’t lose any beer on that one! Just a bunch of elbow grease. [emoji20]
tl;dr : Pressure is a hell of a thing, and always secure your valves.
Being able to keep as much O2 out of the fermentation, and being able to transfer to a purged keg has (IMO) vastly improved the quality of my beer. Not only that, the overall ease of kegging and carbonating has made packaging an actual joy! Who’da thought?
I originally started using a ball lock spear through my sanke fermentation tees, but I’d run into clogs quite often, and cleaning out a ball lock post poppet mid transfer was majorly annoying. So, I thought, why not just switch everything to ball valves! I had some TC to NPTs, some cam locks, and a couple of ball valves laying around, so I made the switch. Here’s what that’s looking like:
It’s been great! Much easier transfers to kegs with a camlock on one end of a hose and a ball valve on the keg side. Smooth sailing.
Until last night.
That’s some of the aftermath of a bumped ball valve pulling trub from a freshly transferred fermenter under about 15psi. [emoji23][emoji24] That sucker sprayed that from almost 20ft away! I got a good dousing as well, and got to scrub down my garage late into the night. Good times!
All’s well that ends well, though. Didn’t lose any beer on that one! Just a bunch of elbow grease. [emoji20]
tl;dr : Pressure is a hell of a thing, and always secure your valves.
