Do you push the new beer in from another keg? Curious as to your setup. Sounds like a good shortcut in time and labor.
What Iāll do is rack a beer to a keg to secondary then push to another keg to serve. Works well for lagers gets them clear. Rack to the keg for the d rest then cold crash then transfer to a serving keg. A keg serving lagers doesnāt have much junk in the bottom.The other thing I do is when a five is half empty ill push it into a three to make room again they donāt always get cleaned. I just keep rolling along. If they have been sitting awhile or a hopped beer they get a break down.
2 Likes
Have you shortened your liquid tube? I would think that no matter how clear a beer is, yeast will settle to the bottom, so when cold conditioning/brightening, wouldnāt you have a soft yeast cake? Curiousā¦ I like your thinkingā¦ Sneezles61
Agreed! I think I need more kegs.
Me too.
Nah I through a tap on it for a taste and just dump a bit.
1 Like
I buy used kegs. Good to have a supply
I buy used as well. I have 5 but still short.
Well the first all grain batch is in the primary, thank you to all for the help and suggestions.
It took longer than I thought it would. We did a real slow fly sparge, taking almost an hour to get 7 gal of wort. Measured the mash ph a little while into it and got 5.24 which I guess is ok for an IPA.
Measured the OG with my refractometer and got 1.060, the estimated was 1.064 so I guess I am close enough.
Ended up with a bit under 5 gal into the fermentor so Maybe I should have started with more in the boil. There were about 4 oz of hops added so I guess that sucks up some water as well.
Learned a lot, and can now re- read my Palmer book and maybe understand a little more of it.
Have a few weeks now to get my c02 and keg ready to go.
Ran out of time so the Belgian tripel sitting in the secondary will have to get bottled tomorrowā¦
Thank you all again for your guidance, it was a big help!
Tom
2 Likes
Good to hear! Congrats! Sneezles61
Good job. Thatās how I learned. First I did fly sparge, painful. Then I went to batch sparge, easier and faster. Then I tried full volume Biab , faster but poor efficiency. Now I do biab with a dunk sparge. Fast and efficient. Itās kind of a cross between biab and batch sparge. We all find our way.
1 Like
I agree biab is faster and easier for me. I do double crush and dunk sparge. Went from 70% to 84% efficiency.
BIAB, a basket, I can hoist most of it out of the wort, keep some in and I will recirc, as the temp raisesā¦ I have alot of fun with this style and would suggest more peeps to tryā¦ I wonāt ever dis the batch system that Denny advocates, but, one kettle and a couple of basketsā¦ Iām good to goā¦ Sneezles61
I should have waited until my wort chiller was delivered before brewing as even with an Initial ice bath I ended up waiting until 5 am this morning before pitching the yeast. Hopefully it will be ok, I had it in the dark with the airlock on it, sitting in a shallow tub of cool water.
I also recall doubting how on earth brewsmith could be estimating so much water loss not just for boil off but transfer to fermenter and bottlingā¦ And it was pretty much right on the mark.
I will give the batch sparge a try on the next batch.
2 Likes
Very good! The chiller is a game changer. We did our first few in the dead of winter in Michigan so used snow and water in the sink. It took forever it seemed. We got a wort chilller very soon after the first batch or two. I have the silver serpent stainlesss from our host which does a good job. I think Iām going to make a counterflow though based on some comments Iāve read here.
Yeah it didnāt take me long to figure out I needed an immersion wort chiller after switching to all grain. Even then with Floridaās warm ground water it took forever. Finally I went with 2 chillers in series with the first packed in ice/ water mix and very slow flow. I get good results for 5-5.5 gallons, but I would need a CFC if I ever go to 10.
We use an immersion chiller, but lack a garden hose connection. We use a utility pump in a bucket. (A ādrain your wet basement pump,ā not an aquarium pump) The pump is cheaper than a second IC.
At flame-out tap water flows into the pumpās bucket, and the outlet goes down the drain. Once we get under 100F we stop the flow of tap water, and move the outlet into the bucket so it recirculates the water. At that point we add a bag of convenience store ice to the pump bucket. Weāre chilling 3-gallons to 60F in just under 30 minutes. You can just pump closed-loop from the ice bucket, and skip the first step. It even wastes less water, but you need a lot more ice.
This was really worth the money to me 
Last weekend it took about 10 minutes to get 4 gallons down to 64 degrees.
Iāll bet that sucker chills down nice! Do check the hose clamp fitting before each useā¦ I found out how hot the exiting water is when mine fell apart ā¦ Long, long, ago! 
Sneezles61
