Keg Purging Advice Needed

1. Clean sanitize keg and auto syphon
2. Fully assemble keg (add more hops now)
3. Connect co2 for 10-15 sec sealing lid, purge once or twice
4. Purge co2 until lid comes loose
5. Rack beer from fermentor to keg, avoid spashing, keep tubing on bottom of keg.
6. Once full, put lid back on
7 Hit c02 around 10-15 PSI.
8. Purge the O2 out with pressure relief, most people say 2-3 times but I am a bit OCD with it and go probably 5-10 times.

Another thing I have found that help Hop aroma is to dry hop as normal in fermenter and also in the keg.
I finished a keg of HomeGrown Wet Hop IPA from October that still had amazing aroma last night.

Hope this helps

Cheers

 

Fill to the top with sanitizer, push sanitizer to a clean keg. No O2. Fill through the beer out fitting.

If you fill through the lid, set the regulator to 30 PSI, purge the headspace, repeat 3 times. You will end up with very little residual O2. If yo use lower pressure purge 10 times.

 

In my brewhaus the kegmeister (me) does as follows: After cleaning a keg, I add about a gallon of water/starsan and leave it with about 15psi. If I need a "hit" of pressurized sanitizer (beer gun, picnic tap, transfer line) I will use this keg. When ready to go into service I vent out the sanitizer through the liquid post. I do not empty the last ~2 tablespoons of sanitizer. I rack into the keg and burp 3-4 times. If I have dry hopped in a keg I will transfer keg-to-keg rather than open and remove hops . . . also with burps on the receiving keg. If I have secondaried in a carboy I will transfer under pressure to keg. Air is the enemy.

I do lots of IPAs and don't really notice any drop off in hop aroma/flavor in excess of bottled beer.

 

Clean keg
Sanitize pieces to keg
Assemble keg
Add 0.5-1.0 gallon StarSan
Seal keg with CO2 pressure
Burp keg 3-4 times
Sanitize inside of keg
Attach clean beer out line
Force out sanitizer with CO2 through beer out line
Sanitize CO2 forced racking cane
Vent keg, remove lid, add dry hops
Attach racking cane to carboy
Drop end of racking tube to bottom of keg
Use CO2 to force beer out of Better Bottle into keg
CO2 bubbles up from racking tube once all liquid is siphoned
Remove tube from keg and seal lid with CO2
Burp 3-4 times
Dry Hop at room temp under full pressure to carbonate while it sits
Put in fridge after 3-5 days
Leave DH in keg until blown

Drink wonderfully hoppy beer over 4+ months.

 

Do you leave a hop bag "tied off" midway in the keg or just let it sink to the bottom? I haven't left my DH hops in the keg yet.

A suggestion: instead of "Drop end of racking tube to bottom of keg", it's possible to attach the end of racking tube to a liquid QD and fill the keg from the bottom up with the lid closed . . . beer never sees a hint of air.

 

I have been considering doing this for a while but have been wondering if there is an appreciable difference in the beer? If it improves the beer then I will strongly consider this method, but I need to be able to justify this change to myself before buying new equipment.

 

For you folks who transfer from carboy to keg using CO2, how do you seal the carboy so air doesn't escape? I tried this method several times, but I couldn't get a good seal on the mouth of the carboy with one of these orange guys, and it took forever to transfer beer (not to mention I lost a lot of CO2 due to air escaping).

 

The first response you got was pretty much perfect.

 

1 Purge sanitized, upright, empty keg (with hop bag) with lid off (5 second blast)
2 Drain and discard first 8 oz of yeasty crap, then drain bucket via spigot and hose to keg
3 Purge keg again with lid relief (3 times)
4 Enjoy for months...if it lasts that long

 

I was frustrated at first, then figured out you don't want a perfect seal. Your carboy really isn't made to be pressurized and you want the seal to break before they are writing your obituary. What I found works is to set the pressure to 3-4 psi and hold the orange cap with one hand while using the other hand to steer the siphon tip. If the seal breaks that is your pressure relief override . . . just crank the pressure down some and start over. Once I got the technique down it goes about as fast as an auto-siphon.

For OddNotion: Almost impossible to say this results in measurably better beer. In theory there is less air exposure (good) but burping eliminates any air that would have seeped into the top of the keg. It's not expensive and having an extra stainless siphon tube around can be helpful (used it yesterday to drain the top opening on my water heater). You do prevent any aroma from escaping during the process . . . the only time I ever want to smell those wonderful IPA hops are when they are coming from a tulip glass parked in front of me.

 

I have never had an issue with mine. But I use Better Bottles. They have red ones that might be a little smaller, you could try that, or maybe go the LHBS and try a new one on a carboy there to see if the fit is tighter.

I learned on this last brew not to dry hop in primary without a bag using this method though. I just put the leaf hops in the beer, and put the hop sack over the racking cane. The cane kept getting clogged, and as I was holding the carboy cap on and adjusting the pressure up to try to get flow my Better Bottle kept lurching forward. I finally figured out the line was clogged and the bottom of the BB was bulging out from the pressure. I'm only doing keg DH now.

 

I boil my hop sack with a piece of SS something or other in there for weight, and then zip tie it closed with flat dental floss around the zip tie. I run that under the gasket on the lid and tie off to the lid handle, bag suspended about 1/2 way up. I have left it in on 2 big red IPAs, it works great. My first IPA that I ever kegged I tried removing the bag after it dry hopped and I lost a lot (to me) of beer on the ground as pulling the hop sack out through the hole squeezed it all over the place, and splashing inside can't be good either.

That sounds like something I may have to do. I am thinking that you would need to leave the pressure relief open to vent the CO2 as the pressure builds?

 

I pretty much use this procedure, although I'll probably purge about 3x before removing the lid. One other thing I'll do is a gentle flow of CO2 into the keg during racking to prevent any O2 from entering while racking (ie positive pressure).

I like the direct connect method from cane to keg also, will need to give this a try sometime.

I don't dry hop in the keg anymore, I tended to get more hop bits in my beer this way, even with a fine mesh bag. The fermenter works perfectly fine for me as far as DHing goes.

 

I tend to brew a lot of PAs, IPAs, and DIPAs so that is where I was mostly concerned. I feel that I am missing a little bit of aroma compared to commercial brews. The hop flavor and taste remains great but the nose is completely different from opening up a fresh bottle of Double Jack or Sculpin or something along those lines. I am mostly considering this because I want to keep that hop scent more intense and around for longer. So to me, if it can help

That being said, I am also working on designing a whirlpool arm for my kettle to get a nice whirlpool effect while doing my hop stands and to cool my wort quicker, next big project (most likely post wedding due to cost).

 

Can you elaborate on this? Relatively new to kegging and I cannot picture how this works / what exactly is needed.

Thanks

 

This seems to show it if you are a visual learner like myself.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/carboy-keg-transfer-experimenting-80114/

 

Yes, a quarter turn on the pressure relief valve or just snap on an empty gas QD. A smidgen of hop aroma will escape through vent as the keg fills. The only tricky part is sizing your tubing (gas and beer). The CO2 inlet on the cap and the racking cane OD didn't really fit my normal CO2/beer lines, had to fiddle around with some couplers to get it all together.

You need the carboy cap (orange) shown above and a stainless steel racking cane. The cane fits snugly in the cap, along with a CO2 inlet hose. You create pressure in the headspace that forces the beer down and into the cane which has flexible tubing connected to a liquid QD. Pretty much works like a corny . . . gas on top and beer goes out the bottom (through cane) into the transfer keg.. The beer sees CO2 only. And you are filling the receiving keg from the bottom up, forcing out the gas through the top, pushing any air away from the beer.

Usually I brew an IPA/DIPA every other brew session, at least one is always on tap. I set up my whirlpool about a year ago and it is a noticeable improvement. Just brewed BA APA IPA a second time with refined whirlpool technique and a good beer became better. I don't want to threadjack this post 'cause the OP likes his hop aroma as much as any of us, but BM me if you're interested in specifics.

 

Thank you OddNotion and PortLargo, makes sense!