Why can't I just skip the racking?

[bennybenno]

Why can I not just ferment in my post mix keg under pressure using a spunding valve, cold crash, connect CO2 and serve without racking to another vessel?

Yeast autolysis maybe? I'm not sure this would even be an issue at this volume, especially at serving temp. I expect it would be very little difference in extended yeast contact from transferring and spunding or bottling.

Maybe no applicable to beers styles with lots of dry hopping due to potential post valve clogging up or over exposure to green hop matter.... but might also be ok

 

[Bassman2003]

I think you could. How is your trub separation in the boil kettle? It would help if you have very clear wort going into the fermenter if the fermenter was going to be the serving keg as well. Floating dip tube would be good.

 

[day_trippr]

Folks here do in fact ferment in cornelius style kegs and go straight to dispensing.
How those that do not use "floating dip tubes" get all the trub and spent yeast flushed out without losing a lot of beer is unknown to me - I've never tried fermenting in a corny keg...

Cheers!

 

[bennybenno]

Thanks men, to me this seems like an easy way to further prevent exposure to oxygen.

Keen to see if anyone sees a glaringly obvious issue, particularly with reference to current LODO knowledge that I have overlooked?

 

[Bassman2003]

I think it is great from an oxygen point of view. What does not make me excited is knowing what the fermenter looks like when I clean it out. Realizing the life of the keg will be served out of that mess is not my favorite thought.

 

[bennybenno]

Spose you could leave it sealed and just dump on some more wort

Can I safely assume that active fermentation would generate enough CO2 to purge 0.5 gal of head space? assuming I split a 9 gal batch between 2 5gal kegs.

 

[day_trippr]

The fermentation from a five gallon batch will fully purge a five gallon keg. I do 10 gallon batches and use the CO2 produced to purge a pair of kegs for that batch.

My concerns are the whole dry-hop issue, and yield. I have yet to see a dry hop method that respects the "sealed keg" concept, and I wouldn't be happy ending up with 4 gallons in a keg - it takes just as much effort to end up with 5 gallons going the convention route. I'd have to brew 12 gallon batches and tie up three kegs per batch - which would really mess with my pipeline infrastructure which is tuned to two 6.5g carboys then two kegs per batch...

Cheers!

 

[ba-brewer]

Folks here do in fact ferment in cornelius style kegs and go straight to dispensing.
How those that do not use "floating dip tubes" get all the trub and spent yeast flushed out without losing a lot of beer is unknown to me - I've never tried fermenting in a corny keg...

Cheers!

I have not done it but I believe some cut or bend the "out" dip tube at a point above the expected trub level.

 

[bennybenno]

@day_tripper: I can appreciate that mate. I don't actually have the capacity in my system to make much more then 9gal without running out of mashtun space with a full volume mash, especially with anything higher gravity. So even conventionally I would end up with one full 5 gallon and one with only 4 gallons

 

[Stonehenge360]

Upside is simplicity and low oxygen. Downsides are less final volume, (although a few 6 gallons kegs have come on the market recently probably for this purpose) and the long exposure to the yeast cake. Probably not a big deal for a few weeks, but personally I wouldn’t want it on the yeast for 3 or 4 months.

I do know some people have a setup where they use their conical as a bright tank carbonate and serve after fermenting, but I’m pretty sure part of that process involves dumping the yeast out of the bottom port after fermentation is over.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

you could use a fermzilla 7.9 gallon all rounder that takes pressure and serve directly out of it. You won't have issues with volume loss. However, you wont' be able to fit as many of these in a keezer as kegs

https://www.morebeer.com/products/fermzilla-rounder-fermenter-79-gal-30.html

 

[bennybenno]

Probably not a big deal for a few weeks, but personally I wouldn’t want it on the yeast for 3 or 4 months.

The current best practice is to transfer to a purged keg with gravity remaining and then spund to remove o2 and carbonate. This method would also result in yeast settling out and remaining in the serving keg.

Is it the volume of the settled yeast that concerns you?

 

[Stonehenge360]

Mostly just the autolysis that I was worried about. The stuff on the bottom of the primary contains layers of live yeast, but also lots of dead yeast and other trub that seems like it wouldn’t age well for months. There’s a reason people use secondaries for extended beer aging (6-12 months) to get it off the yeast cake.

Again, I have never personally tried it and was not trying to be contrary. There’s a good chance it would work great for you, especially if you go thru kegs pretty quickly. It’s easy enough experiment to run. Worst case is the last bit of beer doesn’t taste 100% as it ages.

 

[ba-brewer]

I have not done any full fermentations in kegs, just a few kegs that I finished or natural carbed. I have been wanting to try it but I dont want to have to move the beer to a second keg for serving. I am in the process of realigning keg usage and the thought of fermenting and serving from the same keg for lagers would be nice. The thought of the yeast autolysis is not and that is what has me from trying it, but I am starting to wonder is it really an issue.

When I start with clean wort that is taken from above the break for fermentation I end up with about 2 pints of clean loose yeast slurry at the bottom of the fermentor when finished. That slurry compacts down to about 10oz total(1.25in in each pint jar) after sitting in the fridge for a week or two. I have had jars of save yeast that have sat in the fridge for over 6 months and still looked pretty good(no off smells either) and were revivable. The beer on top darken, but I think that is from oxygen in the mason jar. I have had some jars look good after a year and others that turned brown and did not fair so well.

With that in mind seem like you might be able to go out to 6 months without issues. Might also be good to draw from the bottom and just pour off a couple pints of the yeast while it is still loose before lagering to hedge the bet.

 

[Stonehenge360]

It would be interesting to do an A/B test on this. Brew something clean and standard. Low ibu.

ferment in keg, then transfer half to a second keg and keep them both side by side. See how they compare over time

 

[Iseneye]

Test should show a difference pretty quickly. The finished beer in the fermenting keg has been exposed to not much oxygen while the beer transferred to the keg will pick up oxygen and degrade.

 

[bennybenno]

Right, doesn't seem like there are any clear road blocks hah I'm going to give it a shot.

I will split the wort across 2 kegs as prior mentioned and let one sit for a month.

 

[Stonehenge360]

Test should show a difference pretty quickly. The finished beer in the fermenting keg has been exposed to not much oxygen while the beer transferred to the keg will pick up oxygen and degrade.

If doing this test, you should do your best to purge the second keg with co2 or with fermentation co2 to remove the variable of oxygen exposure. We all already know oxygen is bad

 

[McKnuckle]

I have fermented and served in one keg, and for sure, no oxygen gets in. Of course the purists will remind us that bottled CO2 contains O2. But you can spund if you want to avoid most of that impact, however marginal it might be. I have not had 100% luck nailing final carbonation with spunding, so I always count on forced carbing to make up the difference. It's truly not a big deal, though.

Using a floating dip tube, I had some issues with suspended trub as the keg volume drops, so I stopped doing this. It wasn't happening with all yeast types, however, but I didn't stick with it long enough to reach a conclusion on which ones were better than others.

What I have not done is to ensure that I first allowed the clear wort to settle, and racked off the break into the fermenter keg. I have had similar results to @ba-brewer in terms of a clean yeast cake when I've done that prior to racking into a traditional fermenter. I think I should add this to my brewing experiment list.

In short, the ease and freshness of a single vessel cold side process are great. If we can better manage the sediment, first with more effort to start with very clear wort, and then with using a standard bottom feeding dip tube to pull out the yeast, it might be optimal.

 

[Iseneye]

If doing this test, you should do your best to purge the second keg with co2 or with fermentation co2 to remove the variable of oxygen exposure. We all already know oxygen is bad

There is no practical way to transfer finished beer to another vessel without introducing oxygen. That is why transferring to keg with residual extract left and spunding is the standard for low oxygen transfers, at the homebrew level at least.

 

[Iseneye]

In short, the ease and freshness of a single vessel cold side process are great. If we can better manage the sediment, first with more effort to start with very clear wort, and then with using a standard bottom feeding dip tube to pull out the yeast, it might be optimal.

I have not had luck with spunding and bottom feed dip tubes. I transfer clear wort to fermenter and found it took a long time for the beer to clear with bottom draw. Others have had better luck than me. I always use floating dip tubes to counter that issue.

 

[bennybenno]

What I have not done is to ensure that I first allowed the clear wort to settle, and racked off the break into the fermenter keg.

@McKnuckle I'm not following here, do you mean your not getting clear wort from your kettle? Or is there another step between kettle and fermenter that I'm missing?

 

[McKnuckle]

I get the same wort as anyone else, but I will partially cool it, then rack all of it to a temporary holding vessel first. I then refrigerate it and let it sit for a couple-few hours. The break and other trub settle during that time. Then I'll siphon on top of that into the fermenter, aerating along the way. This avoids introducing the vast amount of the trub in the fermenter.

This kind of thing may not be important for some types of fermentation, but when fermenting in a keg where sediment can be a problem, it's a best practice.

 

[bennybenno]

There is no practical way to transfer finished beer to another vessel without introducing oxygen. That is why transferring to keg with residual extract left and spunding is the standard for low oxygen transfers, at the homebrew level at least.

@Iseneye this might be straying from the original discussion however out of curiosity, have you ever let fermentation end and then added additional fermentbles to carb and scrub O2?

Eg:
1. Ferment to final gravity in a keg or regular pressure fermenter
2. Cold crash
3. Transfer to purged keg
4. Drop keg pressure to close to but still above atmosphere.
5. Inject priming solution via gas post using a syringe.
6. Let keg naturally carbonate like a bottle would.

 

[bennybenno]

@McKnuckle thats super interesting, I honesty have never come across that step. I expect it would create amazingly clear wort.

Most brewers likely chill for a while in the fridge after the kettle chill to drop the final degrees down to pitching temps anyway. You could even add pvpp to further clear it.

 

[ba-brewer]

@McKnuckle thats super interesting, I honesty have never come across that step. I expect it would create amazingly clear wort.

Most brewers likely chill for a while in the fridge after the kettle chill to drop the final degrees down to pitching temps anyway. You could even add pvpp to further clear it.

I just let my brew kettle sit at room temp for 45min to an hour( sometimes longer if I get sidetracked), whirfloc does a good job on it's own to get clear wort.

 

[Iseneye]

@Iseneye this might be straying from the original discussion however out of curiosity, have you ever let fermentation end and then added additional fermentbles to carb and scrub O2?

Eg:
1. Ferment to final gravity in a keg or regular pressure fermenter
2. Cold crash
3. Transfer to purged keg
4. Drop keg pressure to close to but still above atmosphere.
5. Inject priming solution via gas post using a syringe.
6. Let keg naturally carbonate like a bottle would.

It is frustrating that this website censors links to the other website which shall not be named. All of this stuff is covered in depth there. You will also find that the advanced posters from that other website are being banned from HBT so the answers won't be as good.

Anyway, the answer is that the above process will pick up oxygen - your purged keg is never fully purged and only takes a small amount of oxygen during pickup to affect the beer. However, if you change the order to 1, 5, 3, 6 it will get you pretty close. After you inject the solution into the keg you wait a bit for fermentation to start and then transfer the beer with active yeast / fermentation. Note that none of this is my information and is covered on the other website - I always transfer with actively fermenting beer and spund.

 

[bennybenno]

Ok thanks Iseneye that ,makes perfect sense.

 

[odie]

In short, the ease and freshness of a single vessel cold side process are great. If we can better manage the sediment, first with more effort to start with very clear wort, and then with using a standard bottom feeding dip tube to pull out the yeast, it might be optimal.

I've just started my first ferment and serve from same keg experiment. No interest in the whole LODO thing but just looking to simplify my overall operation.

I'm using a regular dip tube so my plan is to harvest the initial yeast slurry when it's tapped. I thought about the floating dip tube but then you don't know when the keg will kick so it's hard/impossible to plan to catch the yeast.

My entire kettle goes thru a 100-200 micron bucket screen to the fermenter so I'm starting with very clear, trub free wort. I figure I will have a small yeast cake spit out the tap followed by a cloudy pint. Then should be pretty clear after that. My current process already results in about 1/2 pint or so of total fermenter cake.

 

[odie]

Currently have 2 keg fermented beers on tap. I tapped a pint out of each after a week and got a nice yeast cake. After a month some taps opened up. The first pint was still cloudy and but gave me a second yeast harvest from each keg. After that first pint they are pouring nicely. Full length dip tube.

Next up will be keg fermented with a floating dip tube. No yeast harvest but I will store the keg cold when "empty" and then refill it with fresh wort and let the yeast cake in the keg start over again.

 

[balrog]

I have done several floating dip tube ferm and serve batches in corny kegs. Voss Kveik Hoppy pale
I poured kettle through this into bucket, siphon from that about 20m later, had maybe 10 fluid oz sediment. I also burped the liquid out side using CO2 to clear any krausen before starting to draw anything.

 

[odie]

try pouring the kettle thru this...a bucket strainer

 

[McKnuckle]

Hi gang, I haven't posted in at least 5 months... Been taking my annual extended break from brewing. Crazy, right?!

Wanted to chime in on this thread about the longest service I've done so far with ferment/serve out of the same keg. I have an amber lager, fermented with WLP802, currently still being tapped at 208 days. It is still totally clear and clean as can be. Great light toast and malty lager flavor, as appropriate to the style.

I used a settling vessel with this one as described in earlier posts, and spunded in the keg. I had not used WLP802 before for this, and it seems to have settled and stayed out of the way of the tapped beer for nearly 7 months! I think some yeasts do better than others with this technique, the more flocculant, the better I suppose.

Hope all have been well... cheers.

 

[PersonalBrewer]

You will also find that the advanced posters from that other website are being banned from HBT so the answers won't be as good.

That's unfortunate.

I do understand censoring links.

I don't understand banning knowledgeable posters due to their associations.

Perhaps there are things going on behind the scenes that are not public knowledge.

Thanks Isineye for at least letting us know