Racking from Primary to Kegs via Co2

If you tie up the hop bag using just enough line to have the hops submerged, you could remove the hops from the beer by transferring a few pints to your stomach

 

Give this a read @FATC1TY
http://www.bear-flavored.com/2014/09/how-i-dry-hop-my-ipas-with-no-oxygen.html?m=1

 

Yep, I do it all the time. My normal primary is a bucket, so I'm using an auto-siphon to the liquid-out post. When using a carboy I use the racking cane through the orange cap to the liquid-out with CO2 giving it a push.

Not overkill at all. I do exactly this when a spare keg is available . . . the hops stay behind until all the beer has transferred. A quarter-turn on the PRV (receiving keg) and you're good to go. CO2 is your friend.

 

I always do closed transfers for my hoppy beers and often do them for my non-hoppy beers as well.

 

So you have to take the lid off your bucket to start your siphon? I use buckets as well and am interested how you rack to keg in a closed manner with a bucket?

 

From the bucket-to-keg the beer is exposed to air. But I attach a swivel nut to end of siphon tubing and connect to the liquid-out post. This eliminates splashing and the exterior of the tubing never touches the beer. Carboy-to-keg and keg-to-keg are closed.

As koopa mentioned, this isn't restricted to hoppy beers. I have two 3 gallon'ers on my keezer hump that are regularly filled by a closed loop from the larger cornies.

For @FATC1TY: My empties are always stored with sanitized water which is purged before a transfer. Usually some starsan foam is left behind. When transferring in through the liquid post it is common to see the foam "percolate" out through the PRV . . . I consider this normal and it probably even helps sanitize.

 

I do it that way for some beers, not all beers.

 

What sort of swivel nut?

thx

 

Yeah, what sort of swivel nut?

 

I just recently started doing all my kegs this way. I used to CO2 force rack to the bottom of a purged keg by removing the lid and dropping the tubing in, but this last time I did it through the liquid out on all 3 kegs of IPA. I also jumpered them to a new keg after carbing them and allowing them to clear, now I don't have to worry about yeast and hop debris getting swirled into solution when I move the keg. Some of the best drinking IPAs I have made to date.

WARNING: If you do this, do not purge the keg and leave it closed! My first time doing this I had the keg purged at 40 psi and didn't have the PRV opened. When I hooked up the QD to the post it shot 40psi into my closed system under my carboy cap and made the whole Better Bottle boom and jump. Had the carboy cap not popped off it would have exploded the vessel.

 

What the brewer meant to say was "swivel nut with barb":
My siphon tubing is 1/4" so I use a 5/16" barb. I have flare fitting on my liquid post that this attaches to. If your post has a barb fitting just slip the tube over it . . . may need a hose clamp or cable tie, but you're dealing with really low pressures so this isn't super critical.

tsk, tsk

 

recently bought one of the speidel 60L fermenters with a spigot on the bottom. Put a liquid out disconnect on the end of the hose and rack into a purged keg that way (purge the hose as well). I still get oxygen entering the fermenter, so looking for ways to close that end off, but for now it's open...maybe get another spigot up top. Way better than auto-siphon out of a bucket though...

 

So if you are using the orange carboy cap to push co2 in and beer out do you just buy a racking cane to stick in the top? Do you have to buy a fitting to hook up the CO2? And is a sterile filter for the CO2 really necessary?

 

I personally have a SS racking cane in mine. I also bought a flare tip to barb fitting that allows me to attach the swivel nut at the end of my CO2 line to the carboy cap. Like this.

 

Thanks for that link man!

 

That's exactly what I have changed. I recently added the liquid post and jumpers. Need to add them into the blog post and update that.

 

Hmm, trying to figure out how I can utilize this with buckets...

 

You could always put a bottling valve on the bucket just above the level your yeast and trub typically settles at. Set the bucket on a higher surface than the keg and allow everything to settle out. Open up the valve with the other end of the tubing attached to the keg, and gently force the CO2 into the bucket. Maybe get one of the pieces I talked about in my post above and insert it in a rubber bung to keep the system closed? Not sure if this would all work, just speculating.

 

what's cool is I just wrote an article i submitted two weeks ago for the december byo the with this as a big piece of the puzzle...talking about considerations for a great hoppy beer. #thankyoupeterwolfe. Here is a great link that I remember utilizing back in the day when I first set up my carboy cap:
http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.4/dawson.html

 

So I am a fairly new homebrewer and have been using a friend's bucket for fermentation. I have a fridge with temp control to ferment. I am looking to buy my own stuff and I really like the speidel. Mostly because of the easy cleaning and the spigot. I rarely transfer to a secondary and usually just dry hop in the primary. I hate taking gravity reading via auto Siphon and also dislike transferring to a bottling bucket.

Can you use the spigot to draw gravity samples and bottle or rack to a secondary with the spigot as opposed to using a shipon?

 

I've been very happy with the speidel so far. Definitely a step up from the buckets, easy to clean the spigot, handles are strong and I like the design of the fermenter.

For dry hopping, that is what i've been doing. You just have to be really careful when drawing gravity samples, you don't want to draw it then leave it with wort still clinging to it for several days. You may come back with a mushroom plug. As long as your diligent about rinsing it, then you should be fine. Also the airlock opening is more than big enough to stick a thief in to draw a sample.

 

Thx for the info.

 

You're very lucky you were using a Better Bottle rather than a glass carboy. Why 40psi? I purge my kegs at 10psi... when the O2 is gone, it's gone.

 

Cool setup overall; I will play with this to simplify things a little. I will mention that the sterile filter on the CO2 is probably overkill; if all the fittings are sanitary, it's very unlikely that any contamination will come from the gas...just saying because those sterile filters cost money. But if you have a cheap source, why not use them?

 

Hopefully from behind the nearest wall...

 

Trying to seat a lid that just wouldn't stop leaking, and flushing as much O2 from the hops as I could. Ended up using quite a bit of keg lube and hitting the rim with a hammer to get it to form correctly to the lid. Worked. Def not gonna do any of that 40psi stuff again.

 

You gotta figure that jbakajust1 does everything to the extreme: "Ended up using quite a bit of keg lube and hitting the rim with a hammer to get it to form correctly to the lid" . . . see what I mean!

Actually the orange cap will pop off at a fairly low pressure. Lots of reviews have customers complaining about how difficult it is to keep the cap on a carboy as they add pressure. Not sure this is by design but you want the cap to fail before you-know-what happens. My grip can not keep it on much past 4 psi, so it's unlikely any brewer will be getting the Darwin Award from a failed carboy. Now anyone foolish enough to clamp it down . . .

 

Hey, I resemble that comment!

 

That is a really cool idea! I may have to do that next time around! Thanks for showing a picture of the swivel nut for everyone Port Largo!

 

Yes have done this before. Good post here and on the bear-flavored site. Taking home teeing to the next level!

 

Is using the sterile air filter really necessary? I mean, after all, there seems to be no need to connect one between a co2 bottle and a keg. I'm only asking because I'm wondering if I might be overlooking something here.