I guess I don’t understand how that will make a difference. Why not just use a keg as a bottling vessel? It’s what I do when I bottle. Hook up a picnic tap, push with low PSI. Works great.
I don’t currently have kegs, or a fridge/freezer, or any of the other equipment.
I’m looking to start piece parting a keg setup and found a gentleman selling his CO2 tank, regulator and various keg replacement parts (posts, connectors, etc.) on Craigslist. It would be nice to have the ability to do closed transfer with low, low pressure out of my bucket as I accumulate the necessary kegging equipment over time.
My plan is to start kegging. The initial investment, going whole hog wild h everything upfront, is currently not an option for me. I can, however, piece part the setup.
I’ve seen several build-ups using low-pressure secondary regulators to give you the “fine tuning” ability to regulate to 1-2 PSI without the risk of accidentally “over-cranking” to 7 and blowing the lid off your fermenter 
I haven’t found one that seemed simple enough for me to pull the trigger on yet, but I’m planning to do the same thing for my SS BrewBucket (which has a spigot) and a couple other fermentors that don’t have spigots (so would use my SS racking cane and low CO2 to achieve the same thing). I also like the idea of being able to “push” the beer because you could pit gravity “against” the flow and have an easy way to quickly remove pressure and stop the flow (i.e. if the cane slips into a big wad of yeast).
My setup right now isn’t all that bad but I’m definitely introducing air when going from ferm to bottle bucket.
I have 2 two gal buckets. One for ferm and one for bottling. Both have plastic ball valves and hose barbs on the exterior. I use a snug grommet in the lid for my dial thermometer and an airlock. Draining from ferm to bottling bucket goes pretty well as I have a hose barb in the bottling bucket lid.
I guess I’d just like to do no O2 transferring to minimize O2 into my bottles beers.
Now that you have the CO2 and regulator one thing you can do to minimize O2 pickup is to fill your bottling bucket with CO2 before racking. CO2 is heavier than air and should provide at least some protection from oxidation if you rack carefully to the bottom of the bottling bucket. It’s not closed transfer nor a perfect solution but it’s one more step in the right direction and very quick and easy to do.
If you’re bottle conditioning it’s not much of an issue since the yeast will scavenge the O2 during conditioning.
I guess I’ll just start saving for kegging equipment then. I need a few pieces of must have gear prior to getting kegging anyway.
+1.
Although yeast isn’t going to help on the hop aroma front. But, bottle conditioning high hop aroma IPA is tough for anyone to do well.
Agreed. This is why I feel Deschutes’ beers are lacking. Bottle conditioning does not serve hoppy beers well. Although, now I’m doing some natty carbonating in kegs while they wait for an opening in the kegerator. Interested to see how that affects the flavor and stability of the beer. One of them is a rye pale ale…we’ll see.
I’m currently trying to figure out how I can top crop while fermenting in a keg. I think I can do it if I have a long handled ladle. With 3 gallon batches, a 5 gallon low profile keg is perfect to ferment in. Just the only thing holding me back is top cropping; it’s so much fun and having uber fresh yeast for every batch is a wonderful wonderful thing.
I’m thinking about the feasibility of the following after some research and time to absorb everyone’s comments:
If I were to install some keg posts on my fermentation bucket and purchase a single keg, wouldn’t I be able to hook the keg up to my bucket and have it act as a dump for CO2? It could essentially act as my airlock and purge itself through the fermentation process. I could gravity feed the beer into it when ready and even transfer early and use a spunding valve to let the beer carb on its way to FG. Then if I want I could either serve from the keg or bleed off some pressure and bottle from the keg.
Sounds doable. Not sure how much pressure a bottling bucket would be able to handle, depending on what PSI is in the keg. That’s essentially what Narcout does, but he uses a SS brewbucket.
You would still need to release the pressure on the keg, I think. Otherwise backpressure would build up into the fermenting bucket and force its way out if it’s not airtight. Even worse, if it is airtight it would probably blow the lid off. You might as well ferment in the keg, then blow the trub out and use it as your serving keg.
I was thinking that the spunding valve would do that, no?
I think that would work. I don’t see that you would need to install keg posts on the bucket though. Couldn’t you just run some tubing from the bucket airlock to the liquid QD on the keg? Then run some more tubing from the gas QD on the keg into a jar of sanitizer.
If your fermenting bucket has a spigot you can use gravity to rack to the keg through the liquid QD. Then you can hook up tubing from the gas QD back to the bucket airlock for a closed loop transfer.
If you don’t have a spigot, you can use CO2 to rack up through a racking cane and into the keg. Hook some tubing up to the gas QD that terminates in a jar of sanitizer (or use no gas QD and leave the PRV valve open depending on how much O2 contact you are attempting to limit).
I’ve been doing all my transfers under CO2 pressure for a long time (first using 10 gallon corny kegs as fermentors and more recently a stainless brew bucket). I learned how to do it from Dean Palmer’s website.
Oops. I missed that.