I'm a bit confused with the setup. Assuming that the fermenter is placed higher than the keg, will gravity be enough to push the beer through the tubing and fittings for transfer into the keg? Part of balancing kegging lines is getting some resistance to the flow. And, which post do you connect the line from the fermenter spigot to? Thanks in advance for your advice.
If you click on the link to my site (the globe icon, I think) and go to BREWING PROCESS, I have some pics.
Fermenter in fridge. Silicone tubing connected to the post of an airlock, airlock inserted into plastic fermenter lid with grommet. Hole in fridge door so tubing can go through the door and to a keg sitting on the basement floor and tubing is connected to a QD and connected to the OUT post. In post has another QD and length of tubing going into sanitizer. On transfer day, the fermenter is taken out of fridge and placed on top of fridge (this is a small, 4.4cf fridge), tubing from airlock is connected to spigot on fermenter, tubing in the sanitizer is connected to the airlock to close the loop. Open the spigot and let beer flow. The transfer is slower than you would expect because the loop is closed. Some of the helpful people on the LO forum turned me onto this. I don't pretend that it's ZERO O2 but it's an improvement for sure. When the fridge is not in use I have a magnet that I cover the hole with. Also, it's not a 'hole', it's a 'Natural CO2 keg-purging port', LOL.
Pretty interesting, using the keg as an air lock/CO2 catcher. I like it.
I would imagine, since you can't see inside, you really need to have your volumes locked in so as not to overfill the keg.
1 question: How or when do you seal the keg lid? Usually my corny keg requires me to put 15-20 pounds from the CO2 tank on it to "push" the lid and O-Ring into place. I would assume I would have to do that before fermentation or am I missing something?
Thanks for sharing the process.
You're correct on the volume... you cannot see what's happening. I have had beer come up into the tubing on the other side so I was overfilling the keg. I needed to take a sanitized 100ml syringe and pull some beer out which pretty much defeats the purpose of trying to be low-oxygen. So yes, be sure that on brewday you are getting the correct volume in your fermenter. It may take some practice so err on the "slightly low" side at first and work your way up. Also, when I clean and sanitize my keg I run the cleanser and the sanitizer out using CO2 (from a tank) and I also hit the big o-ring with keg lube to ensure a good solid seal. After the keg has had pressure in it from running sanitizer through it, I connect it to the fermenter. If my keg was not holding then I would not see bubbles in my small bucket of sanitizer. It has happened a couple of times in 2+ years of doing this but the vast majority of the time the pressure in the keg holds and the natural CO2 (from the fermentation) entering the keg is released through the other length of tubing and into the sanitizer. I assume there a million ways to do this, many being better than what I'm doing but I used the equipment that I had and I like how easy it is to transfer to the keg. You just have to have a clean and sanitized keg on brewday which may not ordinarily be the case. Again, credit goes to some of the guys on the LO forum for pointing me in this direction. Cheers.
Ps. Also, IIRC... the guys on the LO forum mentioned that the amount of CO2 created from one 5-gallon batch of fermenting beer is enough to purge 20 kegs. Not sure if that's still accurate but I'm pulling that out of memory. Also, they had a graphic for how many times you would have to fill a keg with CO2 (from a tank) and empty it so that the keg would be sufficiently purged of O2... it's many, many times. Using this natural process is slick.