Experiences and issues with low O2 process

[Brandon]

Agreed, gelatin is the last thing needed in beer. I used it once and it added no value. I've tried filtering as well, and that accomplished nothing. diatomaceous earth filter at .8 micron or whatever it was we decided was the right size, maybe if I needed a filtered beer. I know Claudius filters his beers, but I just don't have the setup to go through all that and prevent oxidation.

[Brody]

Fair enough, all good points. Thought was to drop out all the yeast, haze, and whatnot asap after fermentation to simulate commercial breweries filtering and not have a gap in the taps. I have 2 chest freezers - I tend to kick the 2 taps in about a month. So if I have a 2 month turnaround for beers I'll have a month gap on the taps.

If I had one of those sweet walk in freezers like Ancient Abbey it would really be a non-issue!

[Brandon]

[mchrispen]

[narcout]

I use the same fermentor as Bryan R, but I attached a gas in post to a stopper so I can rack under a bit of CO2 pressure. When cold conditioning ales, I also pump in a bit of CO2 to prevent air ingress during cooling.

[Owenbräu]

I like that fitting. I may have to adapt that to my brew buckets

[narcout]

These are the parts I used:

http://www.homebrewing.org/SS-14-MFL-x- ... _3607.html

http://www.amazon.com/Corny-Plug-Adapte ... B004I855H8

http://www.northernbrewer.com/plug-asse ... -ball-lock

The hole in the pre-drilled #2 stopped was too large for the 1/4" barb, so I bought a solid stopped and drilled a smaller hole myself.

[jddevinn]

I've been transferring to "brite" tanks (kegs modified with CO2 stones) using a closed transfer to "purged" (filled with sanitizer and then emptied with a CO2 push) for a while. After the beer is carbonated I then closed transfer to another "purged" keg for serving. This allows sediment to drop out twice and I get perfectly clear beer, the keg can be moved and the beer is still clear.

I'm looking to implement the low oxygen brewing and believe I can make all the hot side adjustments fairly easily. However, I do not want to get rid of by "brite" tank procedure and move to a spudding setup. I know that even "purging" the kegs as I do leaves quite a bit of oxygen in the lid of the corny due to the physical design of the kegs.

My question here is has anyone used a combination steam/inert gas process for purging kegs such as what commercial keg cleaners use? I'm thinking of a steam source such as what Yuri_Rage used back in the day for steam infusion mashing (god that O2 uptake must be crazy!!! ) as a sanitizer and to push the air out of the keg, then slight (1psi or so) CO2 pressure to prevent a vacuum from forming when the steam condenses.

[Brandon]

[Techbrau]

It might be possible for you to do a steam purge on your final serving keg and get super low oxygen levels. It's worth looking into.

I would suggest moving to spunding to carbonate though. The food grade CO2 you're likely using isn't pure and typically contains approx 30 ppm oxygen, which will by itself introduce 0.15 ppm DO in your finished beer at a standard 2.5 volumes carbonation level.