I have wondered this for a long time: How does a guy squirt a blanket of CO2 on top of a beer prior to racking; or, how to create a protective layer inside a bottling bucket before bottling, etcetera? I routinely purge O2 out of keg prior and after racking into keg, but occasionaly wanna C02 blanket in other containers for various reasons.
One way is to remove the quick disconnects and use the shutoff valve as an on/off switch. I also have a Blichmann Beer gun that can do the same. The CO2 is heavier than O2, so it just settles over it. I don’t go crazy on this point, but oxidation occurs when bottling - you just want to try to limit it.
I added an air-chuck to my main supply line with a shutoff valve. I can use that to force carb beer or soda with a homemade carbonater cap.
So I just turn that on and depress the end with my thumb and let the gas go in.
I also store my cleaned and sanitized kegs pressurized at about 30 psi. I was bottling wine last weekend and hooked up my a Cobra tap to blanket each bottle with a little blast of CO2. Worked great, once I let the bit of StarSan blow out.
I used to store my empty kegs that way and still do, if I expect them to be empty for a while -but that is not very often anymore. Thanks for the Cobra tap tip - that is a great way to go and so portable!
I think you could even charge up an empty corny keg with 50-60 psi and use it with an inline gas shutoff to push beer, if you didn’t want to tote your CO2 tank along to a party, or whatever. You’d probably want a check valve in there too, just to be sure the flow didn’t reverse directions on you. But as long as you’re going gas-to-gas and the keg wasn’t too full, worst case scenario would be gas flowing back from your serving keg to your gas keg.
Having a gas-charged CO2 is also a good solution if for some reason you have to ferment away from your main gear. You can still rack it to a keg and purge the headspace with your gas-filled keg. I was thinking a couple years ago about picking up a 5 lb CO2 tank for portability, but ended up going the route described above.
I just push the valve in the disconnect to discharge some CO2.
I like the idea of the cobra tap-- if I understand you correctly, you attach an extra cobra tap / hose to a “gas out” quick disconnect valve. You then use an empty keg, filled with CO2, as your gas source and hitch the cobra tap tube to it. At that point you can spray CO2 to your heart’s content, into bottles, bottling buckets, carboy headspaces, etc. I intend to try it.
bunderbunder: I have tried to push valve in disonnect to discharge, as you said, but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Is there a trick to it?
Thanks guys.
I’m using pin locks, maybe ball locks work differently.
[quote=“beermebeavis”]I like the idea of the cobra tap-- if I understand you correctly, you attach an extra cobra tap / hose to a “gas out” quick disconnect valve. You then use an empty keg, filled with CO2, as your gas source and hitch the cobra tap tube to it. At that point you can spray CO2 to your heart’s content, into bottles, bottling buckets, carboy headspaces, etc. I intend to try it.
bunderbunder: I have tried to push valve in disonnect to discharge, as you said, but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Is there a trick to it?
Thanks guys.[/quote]
Yep, that’s essentially it. I was using a cobra attached to the liquid out post, so I had to blow out a bit of StarSan foam first that was leftover from sanitizing the keg. I kind of liked that though, because it resanitized my Cobra tap line for me.
When I’ve had to keg a beer fermented away from my house, I’ve just used a CO2 “jumper cable” - 2 gas fittings with a short tube in between. As for pushing in the valve on the disconnect, that’s pretty hard on the fingers! To quote the Goat, “Hey! That thing is pointy, fellas…”
