Recently I bought 4 ten gallon cornies and would like to use two of them as fermenter/bright tanks.
Question: Would you shorten the out-tube to avoid blowing out yeast/losing beer and if so how much would you cut off?
Again, these are ten gallon cornies. Maybe the dimensions are such that the yeast/trub would be of similar depth as in a five gallon.
Yes. Maybe 2".
BTW I did this with some of my serving kegs- about 1/2" and it made a real difference.
I would just bend them a bit if you are really worried about it. Much easier to bend it back than to try to reattach what you cut off.
Just be careful. If you warp the tube then extracting it fully might prove challenging.
Thanks guys. I was thinking that bending would likely result in a crimp point so I’ll probably just cut one a bit. The guy I bought the kegs from had one bend to face back up. Seemed like this would clog with settled yeast and it left a LOT more dead space on the bottom than I think would be necessary to avoid the yeast cake.
If you fill it with sand and tape off the ends you should be able to bend it slightly without kinking it.
Very clever! That may be worth trying. Hmmm, who’s got a sandbox in the neighborhood? Ah, i know of a volleyball court on the way home… perfect.
Good luck, even with sand and a tubing bender. If you go the sand route is has to be packed in the tube very tightly and even then it’s difficult to get it right.
Partially remove your dip tube and add 5-6 inches of plastic tubing to your out line. It will run across the bottom of your corny and up the side an inch or two.(or whatever you feel necessary)
I’ve done this many times. It works great and you can remove it later without permanently ruining your keg.
Great suggestion. +100
I’ve done this and it works. Also you can replace dip tubes fairly cheaply. But, in regardlas to how much to cut, 2" is way too much. No more than an inch. Half inch is probably plenty.
Remember these are ten gallon and are being used as fermenters.
Why worry about cutting or bending? Get a rubber washer or o-ring that is very tight on the dip tube. Slide it up close to the top. When you are ready to rack the beer, adjust the height of the washer/tube until you don’t get any trub. The washer will keep the tube from slipping back down. You just need a piece vinyl tubing that will fit over the lip of the dip tube and you can siphon away.
Ooops, yeah. Lost track of that.
Brilliant!
I ferment in 10 gallon cornie kegs as well. When I transfer from fermentor to serving keg, I run the first 12 or 16 ounces into a sanitized container before redirecting the flow to the serving keg. This takes care of the initial yeast/trub pick up. I don’t think you lose any more beer this way than you would with a shortened dip tube.
You might run into a bit of an issue if you let a lot of trub into the fermentor and you crash cool before transfer (in that you might have to really jack up the pressure to push the initial yeast/trub pick up out through the dip tube).