Transferring to keg

[marjen]

So I am going to use a bucket as my primary fermenter. It's part of my starter kit. It has a plastic valve I can connect to the bottom of the bucket. A couple questions on it.

1. Can I just connect a hose to it and the other end to a comer leg to do a closed transfer gravity transfer to the keg?

2. Can I use it to take samples without intoducing o2?

 

[TheHopfather]

You can fill a keg like you described and take samples from the spigot but it won't be "closed". As the beer leaves the bucket something will fill the space the beer just left, unless you are pushing CO2 into the bucket, that something will be O2. Will it be enough O2 to damage the beer? I doubt it, but it depends who you ask.

As you're posting in the beginners forum I would suggest that you use the spigot as planned and save worrying about O2 pickup down the road a bit.

Edit: If you feel like worrying about it now take a look at this thread - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=585875, scroll down to post #16 and take a look at what mongoose33 has done. You'd want to rig up something similar only using your bucket in place of the BMB.

 

[marjen]

So even though I would not be opening the container other than to pour it's still going to add o2. Dang. Trying to reduce o2 as much as possible as I am making a new IPA and hear o2 is horrible for it.

 

[mongoose33]

You could do something like this, where the CO2 from my purged keg is pushed out by the beer and back into the fermenter. I start w/ a clean keg full of Star-San, push that out using CO2 (which results in a purged keg), then rack the beer from the spigot into the OUT post of the keg. The displaced CO2 from keg is then fed back into the fermenter.

 

[marjen]

I might have to try that.

 

[mongoose33]

I might have to try that.

You don't necessarily need an airlock; any kind of tubing to which you can connect the line from the QD "in" post will work. It was just the case that the vinyl tubing I had fit an airlock if I cut the top off, so I did.