I know this has been brought up many times and have read up a lot on this topic. However, I was wondering this…I normally ferment in my carboy and just do a longer primary, cold crash then transfer to the keg. If I fermented in a corny keg, could I just cold crash it in that keg, push out the trub and other gunk with CO2, then just carb up and serve in that same keg; or would the dip tube just get all clogged? Anyone every tried this?
I would rack to another keg for carbing. There will be a pretty good pile of stuff in the bottom, and blowing it out won’t really work. You’ll blow out some of it, sure, but then I think more will fill in as the keg sits. I could be wrong. Primary in a keg, rack to another keg for carbing and you’ll be fine.
You could but it’s not a great practice. Better to get the beer off the yeast in the long run.
So while it is possible and someone probably does this under certain conditions there are simpler methods. Shorten the diptube a bit, cold crash and and use a fining agent. Then transfer.
I don’t think you’ll get all the gunk out otherwise.
Corny kegs are great for a lot of things. One can never have too many !
I’m going to ferment in carboy but carbonate in a corny in order to make a cask ale. I have a beer engine that I rebuilt. The last few places I’ve been that served cask ale - most recently Jack of the Wood in Asheville - served cask ale from a corny. It was delicious. I assume the beer was conditioned in the corny.
I was going to get a pin keg but after reading up I think corny’s are fine for fermenting. But I agree that you will want to transfer after fermenting. I’ll be interested to see how much trub there is from carbonating a cask ale.
So forgive me if I’m missing something obvious… What does one use for an airlock when fermenting in a corny? Modify one of the posts to affix a blowoff?
In my corny fermentors, I bend the dip tube so it touches the side of the keg about where the bottom seam is. A friend showed me this. After racking off the beer, you can then tip the keg on its side and blow out almost all of what was left behind. I use this technique to collect yeast for repitching. I wonder if you could use a similar technique before racking.
Instead of an airlock, I use a blowoff hose. It’s just a length of tubing connected to the gas post of the keg with the other end in a jar of sanitizer.
Use a standard airlock. Run a sort piece of vinyl tubing from a quick connect on the “in” post to the airlock. Use a piece of wire to hold the airlock above the quick connect.
I had an extra lid. I drilled a hole in one for a rubber grommet and airlock. I haven’t used it yet. I doubt it works any better quick than using a quick connect.
The downside of fermenting in a 5 gallon corny is you can only do about 4 gallons allowing for headspace.
I was listening to JZ&JP on Brewstrong and Jamil was really down on using a cornie keg as a fermenter.
Ultimately he gave his reason as thee were too many nooks and crannies in there for bacteria to hide and are difficult to clean. I remember thinking that this doesn’t make sense- that it’s ok to store your fermented beer but is not good to ferment in a cornie keg? I think the nooks and crannies point is BS and a cop-out.
I say do it and use a blow-off hose. Might be the best approach for some folks.
I have started doing some ferms under pressure in cornies. First time I tried pushing yeast out. It wasn’t terribly effective, you get a lot of beer along with the yeast and it keeps coming out in lumps. What I did after that experience was to cut the dip tube off about 1.5" for my fermentors. Then I can rack clean beer to a second serving keg using pressure. After that I open the corny and harvest my yeast last. That worked well. I didn’t cold crash but I think that would help the yeast make a firm cake.
I still don’t understand how you’d get the yeast out of there for repitching if pushing it out doesn’t work well. I would think dumping it from the opening of the keg would be risky.
Has anyone that uses a quick connect to attach a blowoff hose ever had any clogging problems? I was thinking this could be an issue so I was thinking of removing the poppet from the IN port and just attaching some silicone tubing to that with a pinch clamp.
I use a pressure relief valve attached to a QD and I’ve had some krausen blow into/through the valve, it didn’t clog. You probably have a 50-60psi pressure relief valve on the lid that would prevent something really bad from happening.
I only got krausen from a 4.25gal batch of weizen. I try and keep batch sizes closer to 3gal. If you’re fermenting 5gal I think your idea of removing the poppet would be a good idea because there will definitely be a lot of blowoff.