I'm brewing a Russian Imperial Stout this weekend. When I get to the point where I rack to the secondary, I want to split the recipe in 1/2 - leaving 1/2 the recipe as is, and adding some vanilla bean to the other 1/2. I have only 6 gallon carboys. Can you put only 3 gallons each into the carboys, or am I leaving too much airspace? thx
If you have a kegging setup, you can just stick in one of your co2 lines with the QD off and let the gas rip for a bit. I've always wondered...how long to purge a carboy or corny fully? I always go with the, "that oughta do it" method. OP, if you're concerned about headspace, just use vanilla for thr entire batch. Drink the bottles thr you want to taste like vanilla fresh and age the others. Vanilla will fade.
The super ghetto method is to fill the fermenters with something to lower the volume. For example, I've heard of people boiling marbles to sterilize them, then dumping them into the carboy. Of course, to fill up 3 gallons you'd need an insane amount of marbles (and it would weigh a ton), so that's not a very realistic solution. But you could use the same principle to at least reduce the amount of headspace. I've always wondered if there was some sort of food-safe balloon that could be used for this.
