Suggestion for purging corny kegs
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:09 am
As we all know, purging cornies can be tricky. Filling with Co2 and releasing the valve a few times doesn't eliminate oxygen; it simply dilutes it. A better method is to fill an empty corny completely with sanitiser and push it out using an inert gas. This is a good idea but won't work for me as I have cut all of my dip tubes short to allow me to ferment in cornies and also to leave behind settled material during transfers.
So, I have been playing around with some ideas and came up with the following technique. I don't own a DO meter so can't verify if it actually works. Any feedback from someone with a meter would be much appreciated.
Using the gas from fermentation to purge a corny
Once your beer shows signs of fermentation activity, sanitise a corny keg and use a jumper line to divert the gas from your fermentation vessel to the liquid out post on the corny. Attach a gas disconnect and blow off tube to the out post of the corny and submerge the end of the blow off tube in some sanitiser (or whatever).
This will force Co2 down through the dip tube of the corny and push the oxygen up and out through the gas out post. Over the course of a day or two I assume this would more or less completely purge the keg of oxygen (not just dilute the oxygen). In addition, the gas from fermentation is likely to contain sulphur, which will assist in scavaging oxygen once the beer is transferred to the corny for conditioning/lagering.
Here's a pic of one way to carry out the above procedure (I ferment in cornies but you could use just about any fermentation vessel as long as you can rig a jumper line between the fermentation vessel and corny and attach a blow off tube to the gas out post):
Do you reckon this would work? I've tried it a few times and the beer seems to benefit but without evidence from a DO meter I can't be sure.
So, I have been playing around with some ideas and came up with the following technique. I don't own a DO meter so can't verify if it actually works. Any feedback from someone with a meter would be much appreciated.
Using the gas from fermentation to purge a corny
Once your beer shows signs of fermentation activity, sanitise a corny keg and use a jumper line to divert the gas from your fermentation vessel to the liquid out post on the corny. Attach a gas disconnect and blow off tube to the out post of the corny and submerge the end of the blow off tube in some sanitiser (or whatever).
This will force Co2 down through the dip tube of the corny and push the oxygen up and out through the gas out post. Over the course of a day or two I assume this would more or less completely purge the keg of oxygen (not just dilute the oxygen). In addition, the gas from fermentation is likely to contain sulphur, which will assist in scavaging oxygen once the beer is transferred to the corny for conditioning/lagering.
Here's a pic of one way to carry out the above procedure (I ferment in cornies but you could use just about any fermentation vessel as long as you can rig a jumper line between the fermentation vessel and corny and attach a blow off tube to the gas out post):
- Purging a Corny.png (421.52 KiB) Viewed 8171 times
Do you reckon this would work? I've tried it a few times and the beer seems to benefit but without evidence from a DO meter I can't be sure.