Brewed 21 5-gallon batches so far and looking to simplify my process wherever possible. Recently moved from bottling to kegging, and just incorporated BIAB. Got a floating dip tube for keg fermentation, and going to order a spunding valve (is there one you love/hate?). Also just heard about no-chill brewing, so think I’ll give that a shot too.
Looking to brew in a bag, transfer to keg with yeast cake from the prior brew, set the valve to let it self-carbonate, and serve from the same keg. Who else is doing this? any tips? What am I looking at, about three weeks from brew to serve? I usually do Belgians or Hefes.
Is there anything dumb about this plan that I am overlooking?
I have two kegs and could alternate if that would be helpful. If I do a closed transfer after fermentation, is enough yeast transferred to brew the next batch from the lees? trying to work out how to avoid trub buildup if doing multiple batches in the same keg end over end.
I’ve heard of serving from the same keg you ferment in but haven’t tried yet myself.
My scheme that I intend to implement when our new house is finished and I have room for a keg setup is to ferment 2½ gallon batches in a 5-gallon corny and then transfer to half size cornies to naturally carbonate and serve. Thus freeing up the 5-gal for the next batch — either with the same yeast or fresh yeast.
I don’t think there’s any way to avoid a gradual accumulation of lees & trub in the kegmenter. I think you’ll want to dump some of the yeast after each batch before adding the fresh wort. (Unless the new batch is particularly high gravity, then you might want the entire yeast cake.)
I ferment all the time in kegs and have no problem fermenting 4.5 to 4.75 gallons. I don’t use a spunding valve though. Once in a blue moon I get blow-off into my air lock with this method. I use corn lids that have holes for a stopper and air lock.
If you give no-chill a try, make sure you do it right. If you simply leave a filled kettle to chill overnight, it will be brown in the morning, and the resulting beer will be oxidized.
That said, I applaud you for looking to simplify. One of the reasons I am hooked on the hobby is to determine what corners I can cut yet still brew a great beer. I’ll let you know when I have succeeded (which will probably be never )
I think this is style and recipe dependent because I have done precisely this numerous times, and the beer has been fine. It’s essentially coolshipping with a lid to keep bugs out.
To summarize - if you want to save your own active brewtime - invest in semi-automated equipment.
Overnight mashing did not save me time exactly, and i had a few negative results - ie. extreme and unpredicatable attenuation, unwanted pH lowering in beers
kegging is a huge timesaver. IMHO i didnt like BIAB and fiddling with the bag draining vs. a reliable faster drain from a mash tun was more annoying and took longer than just batch sparging. my sparging process only takes about 20 to 25 mins from mashout to kettle full and gives me what i want.
idk why people are so into spunding, it sounds like another factor that can go wrong and i dont get what the benefits would be.
i tried doing shorter boils and various half or mostly or even all DME brews and didnt like them.
the big takeaway imho is i would much rather spend another 45 mins to an hour of largely passive time (honestly this is all you can save from doing a variety of timesaver techniques) in my brewday+packaging day and end up with a fully solid product.
one timesaver though could simply be brewing larger -ie. brewing 10 to 15 gallons at a time and filling 2 or 3 kegs. again - investing in more equipment
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