Closed Transfer of Finished Homebrew Beer - Fermenter to Keg

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#HomebrewWednesday
#Homebrewing
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Jesse runs us through the process of transferring finished homebrew from the fermenter to the keg. Of course, there’s many advantages to this, but the primary one is no exposure to oxygen, especially if you’re transferring into a keg that’s been purged with CO2.
Warning: Don’t try this with any vessels / containers that aren’t rated for the amount of pressure that you’re using. Never use Glass Carboys for this process, you’re asking for some serious injury and loss of beer.
In this demo we started the transfer at about 5 PSI, and then Jesse bumped it up to 15 PSI.
Jesse mentions that beer weighs about 8 lbs per Gallon, if you want to be picky, it’s about 8LB 5.44oz per gallon. This comes in handy if you want to transfer a set amount of beer into a keg, or other pressure vessel that you can’t see inside.
Jesse also show off his fancy blow off bottle, which Mike also likes to use to clean out his liquid jumper with, by pushing sanitizer through the tubing before and after a transfer. If you’re interested in seeing a little more about that setup, check out this video.
• Blow off Options when ...
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[@joshuapinter]

An even better way to do this is making it a closed loop transfer by connecting the gas out of the keg to the gas in of the fermenter. As the liquid fills into the keg, it pressurizes the CO2 in there and pushes that out to the fermenter to displace the liquid going out. This saves CO2 and means you don't even need a CO2 tank/line nearby. Brilliant stuff.

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

We may have to try that. I would think somewhere along the line it would stall out and need a bit of a top off, but it would still be worth giving it a go. Thanks!

[@alidavemason4417]

I was going to say the same thing. I've been doing that for a few years now. I also collect the co2 from the fermentation by connecting the blow off tube (Gas post on the fermenter) to the liquid post on the keg., then vent the keg gas post. This then purges the pre-sanitised keg & the tubing with co2. Just a case of swapping the connections over at transfer time & let gravity do its work. p.s. Keg needs to be lower than the fermenter for this to work & no bottle co2 is needed.

[@MS2408ms]

Good video! Only a small thing but you may want to purge the liquid to liquid tube before you start the transfer process. This takes absolutely all oxygen out (I usually take a sample for gravity reading)

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

That is absolutely fair, and we probably should have mentioned that. Generally we just blow the Sanitizer out with some CO2 into a bottle that we talk about in another video kzbin.info/www/bejne/r5ikaZd6a82oiKs so I don't think it even crossed our minds. Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@jamescole3786]

pllllp

[@ericbrady]

Thanks! Gave up beer for health reasons and fell into the coffee rabbit hole and want to make coffee cold brew without oxidation and am borrowing ideas from the established beer brewers. Thinking of brewing the coffee inside a corny keg under slight pressure of nitrogen inside a keezer. My final product will be nitro cold brew transferred to a clean icorny keg. Good day and thanks again!

[@ssadams]

When I first tried this I was worried about the room temperature of the beer but it worked fine. 😃👍🍻

[@Keg-King]

Nice to see the old Fermentasaurus tanks still in use. Wait till you see the Apollo line of fermenters we make now. The highest evolution of Fermentasaurus out there. Cheers

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Thanks for the comment! Those look pretty cool, Mike has been a big fan of the fermzilla in those sizes, and these look like a reasonably priced alternative. We may have to take a look at them.

[@derekillman5921]

Great video guys! I just bought a Fermzilla and this video was so easy to understand! Looking forward to trying soon.

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for the feedback!

[@chenyang1896]

Is there one minor problem? To pressurize the tank, you need to connect CO2 with the inlet with a tube dip into bottom of the keg (the beverage outlet/inlet, yes). So you can see the two outlets connected with CO2 tank before and fermenter after should be same. In this video, CO2 tank is connected with the left inlet, and the fermenter is connected with the right one. So I just guess that the beer in the fermenter will be transfered into the keg on the top. Well, its not a big problem if there's not any O2 in keg, so I am curious this is just a minor problem.

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

If I'm reading your comment correctly, maybe it's just a simple case of the fermenter and keg "facing" opposite directions? On the fermenter, the liquid is on the left and the gas is on the right. On the serving keg, the liquid is on the left and the gas is on the right. I did this just for the convenience of having the liquid posts next to each other. To make the transfer, we purged the serving keg and pressurized both the fermenter and keg to the same psi. Then, we connected the CO2 to the gas port of the fermentation keg. We then connected the liquid out of the fermenter to the liquid out of the keg we were transferring to. By connecting liquid to liquid we were pulling beer from the floating dip tube (in this case) and sending it to the bottom of the serving keg. By connecting the liquid-liquid, the splashing is reduced to avoid oxidation. Thanks for commenting and verifying our process.

[@chenyang1896]

@@ColoradoBrewTalk very detailed explanation, thanks!!!

[@nesshorgan2150]

Great video Best I have seen on closed transfers I now have the confidence to try this When do you open gas purge Is it after last pressure release?

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

You want to release the pressure from the vessel you're transferring to.

[@CloudNey]

Nice video. You got a new sub

[@Gogy19]

Wait. If 9ne gallon of beer is 8lbs and the keg is 4 gallons. Then that is 34 lbs. But forget about that. How do you carbonate the keg?

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Same as how you would carbonate it normally, just get it cold and put it under pressure. I usually go with 12 - 15 psi at about 38 degrees for a week or two. - Mike

[@pdfbrander]

Same thing is happening for me. It's taking hours to transfer, the line is mostly full of gas, not beer (like yours is). I am sure there is a way to make this happen faster. I've tried filling the line with beer first, but nope, still the same. Tried shortening the line, that helped a bit. I don't understand... pushing from 10 psi to down as low as zero and all I get is a trickle. WHY???

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Mike has ran into that issue before , and it's the floating dip tube not being completely under the beer. Usually popping the CO2 off and back on, or the liquid line on and off of it, will kind of pop the dip tube back under the level of the beer and it'll start transferring liquid.

[@pdfbrander]

@@ColoradoBrewTalk Thanks for the reply. Not sure this was the issue though. The end was under the wort. The beer was turning to foam in the line I think. I could fill the line with beer by holding the line above my head and pressing the release inside the connect, but when I connected, it turned back into frustration. Anyway, I got it transferred eventually. Cheers.

[@InvisibleDivide]

What is the name of the valve at 8:38 I think that is really really smart!

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

I shamelessly stole the idea for that from a KZbin video I saw. It works great if you use a spunding valve or just as a blow-off (using only one carb cap, obviously). The piece is a carbonation cap tee fitting. www.morebeer.com/products/carbonation-ball-lock-cap-tee-fitting.html There are quite a few people that use this as part of a keg cleaning setup as well.

[@tachyonist]

Why dont you just use gravity?

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

I believe someone else suggested that, and / or creating a closed loop, but we haven't tried it that way yet. Usually when I'm transferring, both vessels are at the same height, so gravity wouldn't work for me. - Mike

[@jazzyboydc]

I'm new to this. Do u need to do this process with all beer styles? If u were to do this with a pilsner would it be required. I mean if ur using lager yeast and fermenting under pressure. Then I can see why this method would be the most convenient. Any info u can give me would be great. Thnx

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Great Question! The closed transfer is going to be helpful with any beer style, the main advantage is that it limits the exposure to oxygen. Do you have to do it? No, you don't. Should you do it, probably. Mike regularly transfers under pressure even with beers that haven't been fermented under pressure, but that's mainly because he ferments in the Fermzilla a lot, but when he uses a carboy or bucket, he doesn't worry about it, just try not to splash the beer around, keep the racking cane under the level of the liquid, etc. If you're making Hazy IPAs, I've heard those are very sensitive, then we would suggest it for sure.

[@Xlr8ive]

I like your video's but I think the camera person being closer to the camera than the subject resulted in the audio being too poor to hear for this one. I'm interested in this subject though. The floating dip tube looks like a good idea.

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Thanks for the feedback! We were actually using lapel mics, and I think the battery on the Mike's was dying out. I think the audio through most of the video is pretty good, although we tend to keep it at a lower volume than many channels, but it doesn't seem too low to me for the majority of the video.

[@Xlr8ive]

@@ColoradoBrewTalk yeah I figured out what was going on on my end, thanks

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

@@Xlr8ive Great! Although we do tend to have our "technical difficulties" occasionally :-)

[@nesshorgan2150]

I used your video for my first closed transfer Worked great but raised pressure from 5 to 10psi as it was a bit slow for me ( which was mentioned in video ) Thanks I gave subscribed & will be following from Australia Pity the fermented beer doesn't look promising I seem to be having problems with hops & clearing Finished gravity was 1010 & let it sit for 2 weeks?

[@ColoradoBrewTalk]

Glad the video was a help! I struggle with clarity too, a cold crash in the keg should help you out though. - Mike