To overcome the dreaded sanitizer suck back during cold crash ops. I inserted a length of 3/16 id beer line into the stopper and fit my carbonator cap to the other end of the beer line. I connected my co2 line ball lock fitting to the carbonator cap and set my regulator to 1 lb.
I slowly brought the temperature down from a 68f d rest to 34f over about a week with no issues.
I’d be leery of doing it with a glass carboy, but looks like a great solution for a plastic fermenter. I use Speidels most of the time but don’t have the space in my fermentation chamber to use the Brulosophy (Bruloon?) mylar balloon trick
Before I set the regulator to 1 lb and walked away, I figured I would purge the head space. My regulator was set at 12 lbs. for serving. I pressed the side of the stopper to break the seal and allow gas to escape and opened the valve on the gas distributor. No gas was escaping so I looked around for a closed valve somewhere. Everything was open. That’s when I realized that hadn’t really cracked the seal to create room for gas to escape. I pulled the stopper out with a loud pop.
So yeah, possibly dangerous with glass if you’re not careful. On the other hand my carboy was able to withstand 12 lbs of pressure. I would never deliberately try that again but 1 or 2 lbs is safe for my set up
Holy shitsnacks dude! 12 psi on a glass carboy?!?
Threads abound recounting the horrors of pressure and carboys. There was another one going here in the last week.
If you put even enough pressure on a Speidel to initiate a closed transfer (1-2 psig) you can see it visibly balloon out, to the point where it rocks around because it no longer has a flat bottom to sit on. Good illustration of the amount of force being put on any fermenter.
With a properly filled S-type airlock, suckback is impossible, although air will be drawn in.
If height in a chamber is a problem with the Brulosophy balloon method, it seems the OP’s idea of a length of tubing jammed in a stopper could allow a balloon to be placed where space allows.
Like this:
That setup is a whole lot better than a mylar balloon. I have used the balloon approach, and all the ones I have gotten have a one-way valve that must be defeated to allow the CO2 to come back out, and the diameter of the neck is not a good match to any of the airlock hardware I have so it is hard to mount.
Edit: after looking at the comments on the manufacturer’s web site, this appears to be flimsy and unreliable. Still a good idea, just not implemented well.
I’ve had luck (just did it the first time last week) cutting the valve off the balloon, taping the ballon to a tube, replacing the airlock at the end of fermentation with the ballooon-tube combo, and allowing the mylar balloon to fill before cooling.
I would prefer being able to tape the ballon to the airlock.
Get a cask breather. Repurpose it. Works great. You can also use it for closed transfers as well as its use for casks.
