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Author Topic: fermenting and dry hopping in a corny keg?  (Read 1436 times)

Offline redrocker652002

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fermenting and dry hopping in a corny keg?
« on: March 10, 2022, 02:25:43 pm »
Ok, so the post about Cryo Hops and a response from someone that they dry hop in the keg got me thinking.  Everything I have done so far, with exception of my brothers wheat beer, I have had some sort of dry hop addition.  I am thinking of trying a closed transfer on my next keg batch to see if I can reduce the Oxygen issue, and was thinking, if adding my dry hops right to the keg that would probably save me some trouble and keep the leftover crap in he bucket to a minimum. 

Then, and I know this is probably a different subject, I came across fermenting in the keg as well.  Is that an advantage too?  Do you take your cooled wort and just add it into the keg, add yeast and seal with an airlock on one of the posts?  If so, then I can really control my fermenter temp as I can put the keg in my kegerator and just put a temp controller on it.  This is all very interesting, so any input would be awesome. 

My next two batches are going to be 2.5 gallons and will be bottled just to try something different and see if my kegging process is the problem 

Thanks in advance. 

Dino.

Online denny

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Re: fermenting and dry hopping in a corny keg?
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2022, 03:11:36 pm »
Yes, you can ferment in a keg, especially if you're doing small batches.

I keg hopped for years, but quit doing it because it didn't seem as effective as other methods.  At this point, I never dry hop for more than 72 hours, and do it at cold temps. If you mean dry hop in the fermenting keg and remove the hops, all good.  If you intend to leave them in as you serve the beer, you may be disappointed.
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Offline chinaski

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Re: fermenting and dry hopping in a corny keg?
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2022, 05:32:44 pm »
I ferment in kegs and do not lower my batch size.  I bought some lids that have a bung hole so I can attach a blow-off or airlock and away I go.  When I want to transfer to a serving keg, I attach a CO2 line and run a small stream of gas while I swap back to a regular keg lid on the fermenter keg, then transfer under pressure to a purged serving keg.  I use a threaded disconnect on my transfer tubing so I can capture the initial flow of yeast and tub, then I screw the fitting back on before connecting to the serving keg.  I still do 5 gallon batches and no long use carboys (which was my goal). 

I also sometimes bag up hops to keg hop- just add to the serving keg and purge well with CO2 and just leave them in- less opening my keg lid the better me thinks.  I use homegrown whole leaf hops for this and am happy with this system.  And yes, there might be some O2 creeping in during the process but I don't taste anything to validate that.  It works.