X3 Pressure Fermentation - collection and kegging

[DavidBD]

The X3 conical has a collection jar at the bottom. When it comes time to remove trub or harvest yeast, I believe one must first bleed off all pressure before closing the valve and removing the collection jar. However, the act of bleeding off pressure causes bubbles to gas out from the collection jar, which rouses the yeast. Then the beer is all cloudy again until it settles once more. Of course, more CO2 starts to come out of solution so the pressure rises a little. Then you can bleed it again etc. There's a similar issue when preparing to transfer to a keg; dropping pressure during any part of the process rouses any remaining yeast, which I do not want in the keg. Is there a more elegant way to handle this phenomenon? I'm wondering what most people do. Thanks.

 

[DavidBD]

I suppose my procedure for the first trub dump will be to relieve pressure and wait a few hours for the trub to settle again. Then I can quickly release any last pressure, remove the collection jar, empty and replace it, purging air from it with CO2 (using a carb stone attached to the jar), and then slowly bubble more CO2 thorough the beer to bring the pressure back up. Once that is done, the jar is probably going to fill up most of the way again with flocculated yeast.

After that, when it comes time to transfer to a keg, I suppose it will be similar, bleeding pressure and waiting, perhaps several times. After that, I'll just close the butterfly valve prior to kegging, without actually removing the jar. That should save a jar's worth of volume and eliminate the need to purge air.

This may all be pretty obvious, and I may be overthinking it but it's an all new process to me.