Does anyone, when racking to the keg, attach the siphon line to the liquid post? I’ve been just using some tubing, and it’s a pain to get it in the bottom without curling up…
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Not a bad idea. Wouldn’t work for me using the old fashion fill the cane and tubing with water then stick your thumb over it method. With an auto siphon it might work but the small diameter of the QD and dip tube might make it slow going.
Try it out and let us know.
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Just a thought. Would weighting down the end of the tubing with a stainless steel clamp take care of the curling problem. Or two or three stainless nuts sized for the outside diameter of the tubing.
Good idea. I thought also the tubing must be fairly new to still curl up. Maybe dunk it in hot water and hang it up after with weight on the end to take the twist out of it.
I rack through liquid post to purged kegs…i just pull the prv…no stupid tubing curling problems 
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I do as @uncdeo does. I purge an empty keg then fill through the liquid out. Make sure you pull the PRV first and keep it open! If you don’t keep it open the flow will stop.
I used to think that purging and avoiding air contact was a bunch of huey, but I noticed that my beers would oxidize if they were more than 3 or 4 months old. After seeing a presentation on reducing oxygen in brewing at last year’s AHA conference, I realized that it wouldn’t be that difficult to incorporate a few new techniques to my brewing.
I now fill all kegs with sanitizer and push it out with CO2. In addition, I fill my kegs through the out port and vent the keg as mentioned above. Now I don’t see oxidation for at least 8 or 9 months. Its well worth the extra few minutes.
My fermenter (an SS Brewbucket) has a ball valve at the bottom. I clamp a silicone hose on the spout and a liquid disconnect on the other end. Purge the keg as Martin describes, open the ball valve, press the pin inside the liquid disconnect to purge the air from the hose, and attach the disconnect to the keg. For convenience, I attach a gas disconnect to the gas-in port to vent the keg - - the CO2 has to be vented to let the beer in.
It’s quick,easy, and oxygen-free.
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I use a syphon cane. Or a transfer pump. Reason
I figured if this was actually a good idea people on this forum would already be doing it. Between @uncdeo, @mabrungard and @old_dawg you have what I was thinking, so I feel validated.
- Sanitize the keg
- Seal & purge the keg
- Attach racking cane to keg via QD on the out post.
- Attach a spare gas QD to the in post.
- Start the siphon.
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Yep…This
Thats as I do also… I did take some time to come to that conclusion… Did I say the pin locks don’t have a PRV? I haven’t used the gas connector to purge as I fill, I just crack the lid… Sneezles61
When i was dropping the tube down into the keg with the lid open…i did attach the gas and let it flow in.
Is there a reason you cant just transfer the beer to the keg, pressurize it with co2, then just do a manual release a few times to push the oxygen out? Thats what I have been doing for a couple years but my beers never make it more than a couple months before they are empty so I dont really have any experience with beer getting oxidized…
That works. It’s what I’ve been doing too. It’s just a question of how retentive you want to be about oxygenation risk. Whenever the beer splashes, it will pick up some of the oxygen from the surrounding space. My original thought was to use the dip tube just to reduce splashing, but purging too will add an extra level of protection.
After all what is water? H2O… Oxygen is present already… Sneezles61
corogers, I’m a cheap skate. I don’t want to waste the CO2 required to fill, release, fill, release. Each time you fill and release, you reduce the O2 level a bit - the amount depends on the pressure you use.
If you’re using 15 psi (about 1 atmosphere at sea level): Pushing in 15 psi of CO2 will squeeze the air in the keg to about half its uncompressed volume and fill the remaining space with CO2: air is about 20% O2, it’s been squeezed to half its volume, so your keg now contains about 10% O2. The rest of the keg is filled with N2, CO2, and insignificant quantities of other (non-reactive) gases. When you vent the keg, the percentages remain the same. Pressurize with CO2 again at 15psi and you will squeeze the O2 down to half its previous volume - 5%. Repeat the process ad nausium and you’ll be reducing the number of O2 molecules by half with each pressurization and release cycle.
I keep a keg of Star San pressurized and ready (yum! Sparkling sanitizer!). When I clean a keg, I do a liquid - to - liquid transfer of the Star San to the cleaned keg and pressurize it. The newly emptied Star San keg is now (almost) oxygen-free and will receive the next beer that’s ready to carbonate and lager.
Does my process use less CO2 than several fill-release cycles? I guarantee that I think it does. Or … maybe not. But the arithmetic is fun to play with; too bad it’s all based on estimates and opinion.
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I’ve had better luck so far with IPAs since I started kegging but I am looking to improve as I still use an auto siphon to move beer to keg. Do you @loopie_beer use a carboy cap/racking cane/ and gas to push the beer from fermenter to keg?
(I tried to post a link but it kept giving me an error message)
Like this:
It seems like it would work pretty well. My gut feel is that it’s a bit more wasteful of CO2, but I have no facts or figures to back that.
Yes. Exactly, thanks!
