Transfer From Fermenter to Keg - Your Method?

[Sadu]

When it gets close, I remove the keg lid and look. Not really O2-less, but good enough for me.

This isn't ideal, since it's no longer a closed transfer.

I use gravity to do my closed transfers and its easy to tell when the keg is full.

Fermentor needs to be higher than the keg. Connect gas to gas and liquid to liquid. If the liquid line is full of beer or starsan a siphon will start.

When it is done you will get beer in your gas line and the flow stops. Pour yourself half a pint from the keg as some headspace is beneficial for carbonation. Move onto filling the next keg.

 

[eric19312]

+2

I have quite a few beers on tap at any one time and have never had one oxidize. Some have actually been kegged a year before.

haha way to resurrect old thread. I was scratching my head for a few minutes as I've been doing closed transfers I guess for about 18 months now. I now ferment in a 60L Speidel fermentor. I usually keg on brew day during mash and boil, harvest a half gallon of yeast at the end, pitching about 2/3 of that into that day's brew.

My process now looks like:

1. Clean the kegs. Kegging is different from bottling...dirty kegs that stayed pressurized just don't dry out or get nasty. A 2 month kicked keg is about as easy to clean as one that kicked yesterday. Cleaning process: disassemble, rinse well, run on a Mark II carboy cleaner for 10 min or so with PBW, soaking the poppets in same, rinse well with warm water, reassemble.

2. Purge the kegs. Fill first keg to the very top with Star San. First keg on table, second keg on floor. Jumper kegs liquid to liquid post. Keg on floor's gas-in port gets a gas connector with a piece of hose leading to a jar of star san...blow off tube style. First keg (the one on the table full of star-san is pressurized to 3 PSI and drains to second keg. When the liquid liquid jumper starts spitting foam I rock the keg on the table a bit to get last few drops of star-san and move it near the fermentor. If I am filling 3 kegs today keg 2 moves into keg one's position and I repeat. When I have enough purged kegs I still have a keg full of star-san which I will use later for sanitizing the fermentor.

3. Fill the kegs. I pressurize my Speidel fermentor to about 3 PSI and run the beer from the valve on the bottom (I use a 3/8 ss ball valve from SS Brewtech) to the liquid out on first keg to be filled. I use my gas-in hose to star-san-jar for pressure relief. My fermentor sits about 15" off the ground. The kegs fill pretty slowly. I watch the level on the fermentor to know when I am getting close and then keep an eye on the gas-in line to see when a bit of beer or foam starts coming out. Then that keg is done and I move to next keg.

4. Finish the kegs. If I am burst carbing I hook the kegs up to CO2 and pressurize to 30 PSI. In 24-36 hours reduce to serving pressure and they will be good to go in a few more days. If I am carbing with priming sugar I boil the priming sugar in filtered water, open the keg, add the priming sugar, close the keg, purge the head space with about 10 shots of CO2 and finally pressurize at 30 PSI to seat the lid until the priming can take over.

5. Clean the fermetor...harvest the yeast for today's batch. Disassemble the fermentor, clean, rinse, reassemble, sanitize (with that full keg of starsan), drain sanitizer back into the star san storage keg, and ready to transfer.

This process takes time. That 3/8" beer line is slow and I don't get much gravity assist. I can only pressurize the Speidel to about 3PSI without the lid deforming (it still holds the seal and will pop back later but bothers me so I try to avoid it). But my brew day averages 4 hours from dough-in to transfer to fermentor and all this work gets done easily during the slack time of the brew day.

I can't say for sure if my beer is better for it. I do find my beers taste remarkably fresh after weeks or even months in the keg. IPA hops still fade but not as fast. To bring those back on a 2 month old keg I may open the keg and hit them with an ounce of pellet hops in a tea ball when I start to serve that keg. I fine some of my beers with gelatin. When I do this I usually do it a day after kegging, when the beer has chilled to serving temperature and has decent amount of CO2 dissolved from burst carbing. I release the pressure, open the keg, add the gelatin (in 160F water), close the keg and purge the head-space with about 10 blasts, then make sure to reseat the lid with 30 PSI before dropping to serving pressure. I don't tend to gelatin fine naturally carbonated kegs as these are usually stored longer before serving and the beer clears up quite well with time.

I started doing this process when I moved to the larger fermentor because I was doing serious damage to my back trying to pull that full fermentor out of the fridge and get it up on a table to gravity transfer. Thought about using a beer transfer pump but then realized already had what I needed to do the pressurized transfers. Then realized if I was going to do pressurized transfers I might as well do the full job and properly purge my kegs.

 

[Lunkerking]

I use this method :

Purge keg with C02 & transfer from fermenter to keg using a hose connected to spigot on fermenter.

any idea why the beer stops flowing from the fermenter part of the way through the transfer process ? It’s not due to a clog in the fermenter. I do know that much. Thanks for any advice!

 

[Lunkerking]

I just spray everything down with star san and use a tube to connect the valve from my bucket to the bottom of the keg. Open up the value and call it a day. I haven't had an issue.

Have you had a situation where the beer stops flowing about half or most of the way through ?

 

[TwogunRocky]

Have you had a situation where the beer stops flowing about half or most of the way through ?

Is it possible your fermenter and keg are not at a sufficient height difference for the complete transfer?..... I've had the same issue a few times when racking from 1g demi to 1g demi, the lower level of the top fluid becomes too close to the high level of the bottom fluid.... and it stalls, very annoying indeed!!!

 

[Golddiggie]

Since I ferment under pressure and then carbonate in fermenter, I simply connect up the jumper from the racking arm (conical) to the serving keg (either 2.5 or 3 gallon typically) and open the valve. I have a hose on the gas post into a bucket of Starsan to prevent pressure locking the transfer. It also allows me to monitor when it's time to close the valve.

Once that's done, I connect up the Tapcooler and put the rest of the batch into cans.

Being able to simply place the filled keg into the keezer and have it immediately ready for drinking is a wonderful thing. Especially if you do this the evening before a gathering/party and want that beer available to people.