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It's Kegging Time 2021.


Pale Man

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2 minutes ago, jamiek86 said:

@Otto Von Blotto well done nothing like a fast carb, my current pale ale is only my second attempt at doing so. I started at 22 psi for 5 hours then turned up to 30 before bed last night highest have gone yet. left it there until 4 this arvo and poured my first 3 glasses left on 30. Swapped to one of my favourite clean glasses on 4th and got good carb and head. now it's back on 14 psi but still pouring good I use out post to carb before switching to pour. I also enjoy pilsner and like it aged so will try to fast carb a few ales to age my pilsners.

Yeah it took a bit of trial and error mostly not carbonating it enough before I settled on the 20-22 hours at 45psi. I just do it through the gas in post though, not really a fan of bubbling gas up through the beer. Sometimes I carbonate the keg at the back on serving pressure for a week or so but this time I want both done quickly so I can have a taste tomorrow.

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20 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Well no golf now thanks to this bloody lockdown. Still got the kegs done and full gas cylinder as well...good thing I replaced it because it had f all left. Since I'll be home all day apart from shopping I've done my usual 45psi overnight carb. I'll turn it off around 10 tomorrow morning and give it a few hours to absorb before turning it back on to serving pressure and sampling some of it. Good to be back properly!

20210731_140908.thumb.jpg.0b3084aef8663b5aa85bbd3b6bbfb4ce.jpg

love the cobra font  mate  and nice little setup

sorry to hear your in lockdown mate  , it was my 1st golf day  since Victoria come out of lockdown.  and had to ncr    as my leg collapsed and i couldnt stand up
atleast you guys only have a 3day lockdown  as our friends in sydney they will be in lockdown for another 4 weeks yet

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3 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Cheers, yeah I quite like the old bar and taps behind it setup. Ah well there's plenty of footy on tomorrow arvo to get through and work's unaffected by it. I'm on 18 currently but I'm going to have some lessons in the next few weeks. I'd love to get to scratch but at the moment I'm aiming to get to single figures. 

Sounds good, just keep your right arm straight, head down & follow through but I am sure you have heard that all before. ⛳ Cheers 

Good luck with the footy, I will be Netflix/Youtubing, bugger the footy. Cheers. 🍻

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Kegged my Coopers Australian IPA on Friday night.  Dismal failure at pressure transferring.  Couldn't get the timing right.  Ended up just venting the filling keg via the gas post.  Also filled a couple of PET's.  I primed the bottles with a 1/3rd charge of sugar.  Fermenter sat at 15 psi for the last 7 days.  It had some carbonation.

IMG_2512.JPG.31620988d1ea57557f9530ad505edb23.JPG

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1 minute ago, kmar92 said:

@Shamus O'Sean what happened or not with the pressure transfer?

Not.

  • Used CO2 to get fermenter and keg to 12 psi.
  • Liquid line to FV, then to keg, let equalise
  • Gas line to keg
  • Let some pressure out of keg via PRV
  • Connect gas line to FV
  • Supposed to take 10 minutes, right?

After 10 minutes I had got about 1-1.5 litres into the keg.  I tried the same process above, but got no joy.  After half an hour, I just disconnected the gas from the FV and put a carbonation cap on to vent the keg as it filled.  It still took a while to fill the keg.

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What I do is put my kegmenter on the bench and the keg on the floor. Make sure that the pressure in the kegmenter is higher than the keg, I usually just make sure that the keg has no pressure. Get all lines ready and on the disconnects but not pressurized. Connect the beer line out and then the beer line into the keg, you can usually see the beer in the line. Then connect the gas line. I just do a gravity transfer and that takes about 40 - 45 minutes so it is slow.

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3 hours ago, ozdevil said:

love the cobra font  mate  and nice little setup

sorry to hear your in lockdown mate  , it was my 1st golf day  since Victoria come out of lockdown.  and had to ncr    as my leg collapsed and i couldnt stand up
atleast you guys only have a 3day lockdown  as our friends in sydney they will be in lockdown for another 4 weeks yet

Yeah we've been lucky up here that the lockdowns haven't been very long when they have happened, this is the first of the more recent ones where we can't play golf though. Oh well, hopefully the 3 days knocks it on the head. 

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3 hours ago, CLASSIC said:

Sounds good, just keep your right arm straight, head down & follow through but I am sure you have heard that all before. ⛳ Cheers 

Good luck with the footy, I will be Netflix/Youtubing, bugger the footy. Cheers. 🍻

Left arm for me 🤣 but yeah. I have problems hooking with long irons, and just generally inconsistent with everything else. 

Hahah, I have always loved the footy, now that I have kayo I have access to all of it but I'll probably just watch a couple of games tomorrow. It definitely helped me through the crappy times recently. 

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IMG_8037.thumb.jpg.774de3007865f795a61fb40b42605740.jpg

thanks to @iBooz2's post earlier.. v1 of my new bottling hose setup. as an added bonus it's super easy to clean/rinse/sanitise whilst cleaning the keg, something i only realised this morning so it's a double win, really.

i'm going to refine it a bit and shorten it but super happy with this. no need to open the keg after sanitising!

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55 minutes ago, Stickers said:

IMG_8037.thumb.jpg.774de3007865f795a61fb40b42605740.jpg

thanks to @iBooz2's post earlier.. v1 of my new bottling hose setup. as an added bonus it's super easy to clean/rinse/sanitise whilst cleaning the keg, something i only realised this morning so it's a double win, really.

i'm going to refine it a bit and shorten it but super happy with this. no need to open the keg after sanitising!

I was planning to make the same @Stickers, as per @iBooz2 post also.

Think I have enough spares & hose to make one.

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Just Kegged a  Grain and Grape fwk  kit  which is the Hop Nation colabriation    xpa

just finished cleaning the fermenter and boy am i looking forward to this  keg

kegged it the  @iBooz2  method (been doing this way for sometime though and do this with the coopers fermenter..

now just gotta sit and let it carb up the slow method   (don't like the fast method of carbing)

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On 8/1/2021 at 11:04 AM, Stickers said:

thanks to @iBooz2's post earlier.. v1 of my new bottling hose setup. as an added bonus it's super easy to clean/rinse/sanitise whilst cleaning the keg, something i only realised this morning so it's a double win, really.

Look out @MUZZY you now have a challenger for the Coopers Community Trade Mark Award ha ha..😁

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It’s kegging day today in the Alicat Brewery, another batch of Leigh’s Lager.  Took several pics of the process to show my FV tilt table which I used for bottling and now kegging.  I think I mentioned this Pinocchio (little wooden helper) ages ago and was always going to post some pics as my verbal description of it was a tad hard to follow.  Pics uploaded in reverse order but never mind you get the drift.

Basically as you can see it two bits of marine ply sealed with some clear sealer to stop moisture ingress.  The lager bottom piece can be clamped to the bench or just use some handy counter weights as per the pic to keep the bottom piece stable.

The notch cut-out at the front is so the bottling wand can extend backwards and underneath when the FV is tilted forward.  Then I just used a couple of pieces of SS piano hinge to fix the two bits of ply together so they can hinge like a door and totally adjustable / variable for tilt angle.

The uprights are screwed to the top piece of ply and hold the FV (Coopers or Bunnings drum) in position as it is slowly tilted forward.  It’s basically the reverse of the @Journeyman method he uses to tilt the FV back in the fridge to keep the trub away from the tap.

I start off with the FV upright but as the beer gets down to just above the tap, then slide a block of wood under the back (a cork sanding block in my case) to gently tilt the FV forward without disturbing the trub.  Do this carefully a couple of times as the beer level drops and the trub does not get stirred up at all.  I can get every last bit of beer out before the trub starts entering the tap.

Best of all its hands free so you can bottle without having to hold or tilt the FV back and forth with one hand as you reach for the next bottle etc.

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 6 - resized.jpg

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 5 - resized.jpg

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 4 - resized.jpg

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 3 - resized.jpg

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 2 - resized.jpg

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 1 - resized.jpg

Edited by iBooz2
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1 hour ago, iBooz2 said:

It’s kegging day today in the Alicat Brewery, another batch of Leigh’s Lager. 

Best of all its hands free so you can bottle without having to hold or tilt the FV back and forth with one hand as you reach for the next bottle etc.

Kegging from Coopers FV with tilt table 5 - resized.jpg

 

 

 

 

Ingenious 🙂 

What's that contraption on your gas post?

 

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1 hour ago, iBooz2 said:

It’s basically the reverse of the @Journeyman method he uses to tilt the FV back in the fridge to keep the trub away from the tap.

I do (manually) a similar thing when bottling or kegging - the 4x2 goes under the front at start until the level drops to near the tap. Then I take it out and continue until the level drops near the tap. Then I put it at the back to tilt the FV to get the last beer out.

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50 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

Ingenious 🙂 

What's that contraption on your gas post?

 

its overflow device so that you do not over fill the  kegs

you can put a spundig valve on there as well  if you you want to keep the Keg  to fill slowly at your pace if you 
pressure ferment

They are cheap to purchase from kegland you will also have to purchase a disconnect as well  

when i purchased mine i also got a stainless steel disconnect  (only reason i am going from the plastic disconnects to stainless disconnects )
 

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@iBooz2, @Journeyman or @ozdevil, do these overflow devices work under the effect of gravity?  I thought they needed some pressure behind them, such as in a pressure transfer. 

I have one but have never used it.  1. Because I have only pressure transferred once so far; and 2. Because I always take a few bottles off the top of the fermenter so that what is left in the fermenter will always fit in a keg, without over-filling.  Another example of something I saw and bought before my brewing had advanced to that stage.  Although I thought it would be handy, by the time I got to that depth of the rabbit hole, given my practices, I found that I did not use it.

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29 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

@iBooz2, @Journeyman or @ozdevil, do these overflow devices work under the effect of gravity?  I thought they needed some pressure behind them, such as in a pressure transfer. 

I have one but have never used it.  1. Because I have only pressure transferred once so far; and 2. Because I always take a few bottles off the top of the fermenter so that what is left in the fermenter will always fit in a keg, without over-filling.  Another example of something I saw and bought before my brewing had advanced to that stage.  Although I thought it would be handy, by the time I got to that depth of the rabbit hole, given my practices, I found that I did not use it.

no they work on Gravity as well  , i used mine for the 1st time transfering from a coopers fermenter to a keg  and gravity filled it.

so you can use them for just gravity and pressure

you can even add a spuding valve on it so you can control the flow rate if pressure transfering

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Is there a reliable way to tell how much beer is left in a keg or is it part of the game to not know when a keg will blow? 

Also, I'm looking for a regulator with two outlets, so I can keep beers on serving pressure while still being able to force carb a keg. Kegland has one but it's out of stock and there is no eta. I've been looking on eBay but the only one I could find is $200+, a little more I am willing to spend, considering Kegland only asks for $79. Do you know of other decent sources?

 

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1 hour ago, Aussiekraut said:

Is there a reliable way to tell how much beer is left in a keg or is it part of the game to not know when a keg will blow? 

Also, I'm looking for a regulator with two outlets, so I can keep beers on serving pressure while still being able to force carb a keg. Kegland has one but it's out of stock and there is no eta. I've been looking on eBay but the only one I could find is $200+, a little more I am willing to spend, considering Kegland only asks for $79. Do you know of other decent sources?

 

 

only way really to know  is by weighing the keg  as 1kg of liquid would roughly be 1litre.

or you could spend a fortune  on a plaato keg management system you will need 3-4 of them in 4 keg  kegarator   as you sit the full kegs on them
and after each glass   the keg managent system will tell you how much left in the keg..

otherwise you  get surprised when you get gas coming out and not beer


on the second one  you could set up a manifold with inline regulaters  so you can just turn gas full on  and set the inline regs to what ever you want
like below

kl17701_-_4_output_gas_board_fittings_attached_edited_1.thumb.jpg.ad0a270b0030df8b38569639ab05ef27.jpg

Edited by ozdevil
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