We just ordered 5 of these. Never used them before. Corny keg floating pick up tubes.
What is your experience with these?
Nice clear beer?
Please say yes!
They work great for me.
I have not used them but I know a number of people who have used them with great results. They keep nudging me to use them but I have not gone there yet. I feel like you will be very happy with your results. Please share when you have some experience with them.
I have two Clear Beer systems and one Torpedo Buoy. The Clear Beer systems are excellent but more $. The Buoy tends to give more foam because it hangs up on the side of the keg. I’ll probably replace it with a Clear Beer system soon.
Why would it hang up on the side? Is there something there it catches on?
The theory on HBT is the hose isn’t heavy enough. I’m not really sure but the hose is a lighter weight material than the ClearBeer system. Some people are adding a weight which they report seems to help keep the hose below the surface.
Good to know. Now we are looking for some good weights!
I made my own after LHBS kept running out of stock when I was there willing to buy. Works great!
I use the Clear Beer system in all my kegs and really like it. It works as advertised.
Got these for $17.99. The Clear Beer System is $$$.
The one downside to these is that you can’t purge a keg filled with Star San in a closed pressure transfer. I remember reading that when someone tried this, it left 3-6 oz of Star San in the bottom of the keg. A pressure transfer should work otherwise but you would have to just purge the keg with CO2 and hope you got all the oxygen out.
Clear Beer recommends on their website to do an open transfer to the keg with some time still left in active fermentation to consume the remaining oxygen in the keg. This seems less than ideal if one is concerned about oxidation.
I have two clear beer draft setups. I stopped using them. To me they are not any better than a dip tube for clear beer. My two cents…
We cut 1" off the bottom of the dip tube, to prevent sucking up any mud. This really helps.
Perhaps the lighter weight hose pinches which causes the foam?
I see that the Torpedo buoy uses a different hose than the FermZilla. Perhaps the problem is fixed. I’m buying 3 so I hope so.
I put the Clear Beer system in most of my kegs. If you want to fully drain all of the sanitizer out of the keg, trim the gas in tube flush with the inside of the keg. Then after pushing the sanitizer out with CO2, put a gas connector on the post, turn the keg upside down and drain the rest of the sanitizer. I have no problem doing a closed transfer with the Clear Beer system.
Definitely a good way to go - I might consider that with my gas in tubes. For now, I typically use my Clear Beer floating diptube in a Kegmenter fermentation set up, so I spund with a spunding valve near the end of fermentation and transfer closed loop to the serving kegs with clear and carbonated beer that I top off with a little force carb when needed. Pretty slick.
I use Iodophors and purge my kegs with the Clear Beer system with zero issues.
Weights were mentioned here…so what is best to use? I have some nice and small fishing weights. ;D
I assume they don’t make those put of lead any more, like when I was a kid. Do you know what the material is?