58 L SS Kegmenter

[Classic Brewing Co]

23 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

Here you go Red, some thinking out loud for when using my 58 L Kegmenter.  Some of my question to self may get you thinking on how you are going to manage yours when you get it.     Plus you may come up with other ideas to make the tasks easy and let me know too.

58 L Kegmenter

Too many Job Sheets Al, just get a smaller one. 

[kmar92]

@iBooz2 I was wondering how you are going with that big boy kegmenter? Have you put a brew through it yet?

[iBooz2]

1 hour ago, kmar92 said:

@iBooz2 I was wondering how you are going with that big boy kegmenter? Have you put a brew through it yet?

No K, I am sorry to say it has been put on the back burner.  My plan was to christen it with a brew of a double batch of my Leigh's Lager for my sick mate and his supporters but he has become far too ill and it may be a mute point.  I have already got 2 Kegs chilled and carbed up ready for a final get together but lock downs have prevented us from gathering and he is now unable to move about his home very much let alone drink a beer so we are all rather deflated and melancholy.  The cubes are ready to pour in and the big starter of 34/70 has been done but has been put into the chiller for now.  I might do it next week just to take my mind of his troubles but we will see.  Sorry to post this.

[kmar92]

Thanks Al appreciate your post. Sorry to hear about your mate but it sounds like he has plenty of support. My thoughts are with him.

[iBooz2]

Brought the 58 L SS Kegmenter on-line in my brewery today for the first time.  A couple of issues that I need to work on.

Tipping the 5 – 10 L of SP solution out and rinsing is problematic.  No sink in brewery so it has to be carried / manhandled down to the back yard where it can be tipped then sprayed out with a garden hose.  I also like to flush my gear out a few times with hot tap water so this had to be done with a couple of 5 L jugs at a time.  I used one of those foam rubber camping mat pieces on the ground so I could slide and roll the Kegmenter around in order for the flushing water to rinse all surfaces without scratching the hell out of it.  Plus this mat helped to keep things cleaner on the outside.

Sanitising it is not as big an issue as it can be rolled around tipped up with just a couple of litres of sanitiser so no big deal to lift and lug.  Draining the sanitiser was also easy, just upend the Kegmenter and sit on an empty 10 L handy pail.  I left it that way for most of the afternoon so as to completely drain.  Just so I could harvest the sanitiser for re-use.

Dropping the wort into it via a “cap top tap” on the cube worked ok because I could rest the heavy cube on the rim of the 58 L Kegmenter then allow the cube to drain without spillage or splashing.

Aerating was tricky as my SS aerating wand gear had not turned up via courier and I had no hope of doing it with my big SS whisk.  So stuck the sanitised Coopers big mixing spoon into my battery drill, then stirred the hell out of the surface of the wort to try and get as much air contact as possible.  After pitching the yeast from the starter, got the drill and spoon going again.  Hopefully this will be enough to excite the yeast into action as it was quite foamy in the end.

[Red devil 44]

17 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

Brought the 58 L SS Kegmenter on-line in my brewery today for the first time.  A couple of issues that I need to work on.

Tipping the 5 – 10 L of SP solution out and rinsing is problematic.  No sink in brewery so it has to be carried / manhandled down to the back yard where it can be tipped then sprayed out with a garden hose.  I also like to flush my gear out a few times with hot tap water so this had to be done with a couple of 5 L jugs at a time.  I used one of those foam rubber camping mat pieces on the ground so I could slide and roll the Kegmenter around in order for the flushing water to rinse all surfaces without scratching the hell out of it.  Plus this mat helped to keep things cleaner on the outside.

Sanitising it is not as big an issue as it can be rolled around tipped up with just a couple of litres of sanitiser so no big deal to lift and lug.  Draining the sanitiser was also easy, just upend the Kegmenter and sit on an empty 10 L handy pail.  I left it that way for most of the afternoon so as to completely drain.  Just so I could harvest the sanitiser for re-use.

Dropping the wort into it via a “cap top tap” on the cube worked ok because I could rest the heavy cube on the rim of the 58 L Kegmenter then allow the cube to drain without spillage or splashing.

Aerating was tricky as my SS aerating wand gear had not turned up via courier and I had no hope of doing it with my big SS whisk.  So stuck the sanitised Coopers big mixing spoon into my battery drill, then stirred the hell out of the surface of the wort to try and get as much air contact as possible.  After pitching the yeast from the starter, got the drill and spoon going again.  Hopefully this will be enough to excite the yeast into action as it was quite foamy in the end.

Cheers for the update @iBooz2, good information to know as I am just about to purchase this item.

‘I like the resting the cube idea mate as I’m thinking about going BIAB and cubing myself with the 58L.

[kmar92]

@iBooz2 interesting seeing how you have gone so far with it. With my baby version I have started using a S/S siphon for filling it and I find that works well, but it is another piece that must be cleaned and sanitised, so additional work. The siphon also works well when I clean out the kegmenter, I usually fill it with a SP solution with it sitting on the bench in the laundry, let is soak overnight and then siphon the SP solution into the laundry sink and do a rinse with hot water and empty it in the same manner. More difficult of course with the bigger version. Usually I like to use a sponge to remove the krausen ring from FV's but that is harder to do with these kegmenters as I have to get my fat arm down through the 4" tri-clover opening, and that does cause some problems but is possible. For the last few brews in the kegmenter I have been using a cheap Bunnings paint stirrer in a drill to aerate the wort before pitching and so far it has worked really well. The paint stirrer seems to have a pretty good powder coat finish that I am hoping holds up well and keeps the steel sealed and is not too bad to clean.

Al I find that the forte of the kegmenters is lagers, as you can do a lager at higher temps without throwing any off tastes, that ferment much faster and with no need for a diacetyl rest.

[iBooz2]

Update on the 58 L Kegmenter pro and cons:  @Red devil 44

Kegged 2 x 19 L kegs of Leigh’s lager today and decided to run this though the filter then into the kegs.  This turned out a bit of a mistake as this batch had been sitting at 2 C and at around 7 psi for a couple of week due to circumstances so the beer was pretty much all carbed up. 

This played havoc with the filtering process as it generated a lot of foam when it went through the filter and I wasted quite a bit of beer having to bleed the CO2 out of the filter every so often when the foam built up.

So might have to skip the filtering of batches out of this big bad boy in future.

Other big issue is because the Kegmenter sits at a height which is not high enough to use gravity to fill the last half of the second keg I have to use CO2 from the bottle to push the beer out.  This consumes CO2 which is then wasted when you need to open the Kegmenter for cleaning or doing a new dirty batch.  I had to do this once the beer level in the Kegmenter dropped to about the same level as the beer in the second keg which was sitting on the garage floor.

I could raise the Kegmenter in my fridge but would then lose the top clearance needed to fill the Kegmenter via cubes.  Now if I had a spare keg at the right time I could harvest the CO2 from the ferment process, store it a short time and then use that to push the last of the beer out.  We will see how that goes next time.

Edited October 4, 2021 by iBooz2

[Shamus O'Sean]

10 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

Other big issue is because the Kegmenter sits at a height which is not high enough to use gravity to fill the last half of the second keg I have to use CO2 from the bottle to push the beer out.  This consumes CO2 which is then wasted when you need to open the Kegmenter for cleaning or doing a new dirty batch.

I sometimes use CO2 from the gas bottle to purge the last bit of sanitiser from a keg I have just cleaned.  I mostly have the regulator set on only a few psi to push the sanitiser out.  You could do the same with the Kegmenter.  Still using CO2 to empty, but at least not left with your Kegmenter full of CO2 at say 12psi that you vent into space.

Something like this approach might also help with your foaming issue.  If the Kegmenter is at 7 psi, fit a spunding valve to the receiving keg and set it at 5-6 psi.  This should slow down the rate of transfer and reduce foaming.  Although I have never used a filter, so the above idea might not work at all with one in the line.

[Red devil 44]

21 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

Update on the 58 L Kegmenter pro and cons:  @Red devil 44

Kegged 2 x 19 L kegs of Leigh’s lager today and decided to run this though the filter then into the kegs.  This turned out a bit of a mistake as this batch had been sitting at 2 C and at around 7 psi for a couple of week due to circumstances so the beer was pretty much all carbed up. 

This played havoc with the filtering process as it generated a lot of foam when it went through the filter and I wasted quite a bit of beer having to bleed the CO2 out of the filter every so often when the foam built up.

So might have to skip the filtering of batches out of this big bad boy in future.

Other big issue is because the Kegmenter sits at a height which is not high enough to use gravity to fill the last half of the second keg I have to use CO2 from the bottle to push the beer out.  This consumes CO2 which is then wasted when you need to open the Kegmenter for cleaning or doing a new dirty batch.  I had to do this once the beer level in the Kegmenter dropped to about the same level as the beer in the second keg which was sitting on the garage floor.

I could raise the Kegmenter in my fridge but would then lose the top clearance needed to fill the Kegmenter via cubes.  Now if I had a spare keg at the right time I could harvest the CO2 from the ferment process, store it a short time and then use that to push the last of the beer out.  We will see how that goes next time.

Cheers for the heads up @iBooz2, valuable information indeed.

Lets hope it’s a smoother run for you next time. 

[iBooz2]

On 10/5/2021 at 8:31 AM, Shamus O'Sean said:

I sometimes use CO2 from the gas bottle to purge the last bit of sanitiser from a keg I have just cleaned.  I mostly have the regulator set on only a few psi to push the sanitiser out.  You could do the same with the Kegmenter.  Still using CO2 to empty, but at least not left with your Kegmenter full of CO2 at say 12psi that you vent into space.

Something like this approach might also help with your foaming issue.  If the Kegmenter is at 7 psi, fit a spunding valve to the receiving keg and set it at 5-6 psi.  This should slow down the rate of transfer and reduce foaming.  Although I have never used a filter, so the above idea might not work at all with one in the line.

Yep Shamus, I normally push the sanitiser through a couple of kegs in readiness but it looks like I need another one to harvest and store some CO2 at pressure so I can re-use.  Why is it in this hobby when you have 8 kegs you need 10 and when you have 10 kegs you find you need 11?   Go figure!

I have used the filter before with ales under pressure albeit that was a bit less and did not have this issue.  I think it was just that the beer had been sitting there for over 2 weeks at almost serving pressures.  I did start the transfer off slowly with another spunding valve I have that is a bit dodgy (but good for this purpose) and then swapped that over to the auto keg fill device when they got to near full.  Foaming issue was all the way though filling both kegs so I think the combination of that bit extra pressure and the resistance encountered in the filter fabric brought me unstuck this time.

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by iBooz2

[iBooz2]

@Red devil 44 , 

The harvesting of the yeast trub out of the big 58 L Kegmenter posed a bit of a challenge, well to do it with best sanitation practices anyway.  After thinking about it for a while I decided to waste a bit of CO2 from my bottle and use that to push some yeast up and out into my collection reagent jars (a 1 L and a 0.5 L).  What I decided to do was take off the floating SS ball and filter cage I had on the end of my floating dip tube line.  Cleaned that all up and sanitised everything.  What I hoped for was that the dip tube line, when re-dropped into the Kegmenter would drop down enough, under and into the yeast cake at the bottom without a weight and this worked.

Once the Kegmenter was sealed up again, I was able to apply about 10 psi to the gas in post and after a little while the yeast started to fill my reagent jar.  All good with 1.5 L collected it was time to dump the rest and clean out the Kegmenter which was a lot of man handling but I am working on a way to do this without any heavy lifting and tossing it about so stay tuned.

[Journeyman]

I have a couple of questions on these kegmenters...

Is Kegland the only place to sell them commercially? I can get one from there but there seems nowhere else.

Even KL don't seem to have spare seals for them - where did you guys get yours? @iBooz2 @kmar92 Wait: I think this is them, right? https://www.kegland.com.au/4inch-tri-clover-silicone-beaded-seal.html

If anyone has the 29L version can you tell me width and height please?

I like the fermentasaurus but it's a PITA having to make sure the FV fridge is empty & removing the shelves so I can get it in for CC - those muthas are tight enough I'm thinking there's not a lot of difference in the risk between lifting 30kg around to trying to wrestle them out of the fridge! (for strength I have 1 wire shelf jammed in the same slot as another shelf - works brilliantly but it's major effort to get them out.

So I'm thinking (which I didn't do properly before getting the Ferm Gen 3 or I'd ahve realised CC would be an issue) I'll put it on BSS or gumtree and get a SS kegmenter which can simply replace an FV. Looking at the ads it looks not too much different to a plastic FV and I have plenty of room around those.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Journeyman

[kmar92]

@Journeyman I have only ever seen them at KL. That EPDM seal that you linked is the one that fits, it is a 4" tri-clover fitting on the kegmenters.

The 29l kegmenter is 380mm high and 395mm wide. If you look at the listing on the KL site there is a pdf spec sheet there that shows all the specs and dimensions and contains detailed drawings.

[iBooz2]

2 hours ago, Journeyman said:

I have a couple of questions on these kegmenters...

Is Kegland the only place to sell them commercially? I can get one from there but there seems nowhere else.

Even KL don't seem to have spare seals for them - where did you guys get yours? @iBooz2 @kmar92 Wait: I think this is them, right? https://www.kegland.com.au/4inch-tri-clover-silicone-beaded-seal.html

If anyone has the 29L version can you tell me width and height please?

 

@Journeyman , yes Mark that is the seal you will need.  If you are careful and treat it right you would have no need for spare but you just know when you what to seal up a new brew and you buggered that seal it would be a PITA so I suggest at least one spare seal.

KK also sell SS Kegmenters but a slightly smaller volume than the KL ones.  I have the measurements and weights of all SS Kegmenter models here somewhere (I physically went to both KK and KL and did that for my own research) will see if I can dig them up and post later.

EDIT: I see Kmar92 has since replied so you now have the KL specs.

Edited November 17, 2021 by iBooz2