No, the title of this thread didn't accidentally miss out "babes" or anything so settle down chaps.
With my SS Brewbucket I'd been using an old fashioned two piece airlock, but since San Diego Super Yeast came back I've been doing the following "blowoff" arrangement, as a precaution (not needed as it happens);
As you can see, a 1.25L springwater bottle half full - with springwater as it happens, just drain of half for kitchen use then pop the hose in.
This works fine, perfect seal on the lid and bung so it's a good method of monitoring progress as I can't see into the FV and fairly kitten proof.
Now after the bloops subside to one every half minute or so I've been reducing to near zero for a week then transferring into a CO2 filled keg. Last three brews the blowoff bottle has been empty on keg transfer.
First two times I thought "strange".
Yesterday the penny dropped, as it should have done, and I thought "****, Bribie, how could you have missed that one".
Clearly on cooling, the volume of the beer has decreased and also the volume of the gas in the headspace - I mean the volume occupied by the molecules of the gas - and there has been "suck back" - to the tune of about half a litre per brew in this case.
No deleterious effects on the beers that I noticed - there has been some slight dilution of course but I've escaped infections as the system has been pretty sterile to begin with. I'm just concerned that after the suck back of the water, then some air would probably been sucked in as well. Nasty 02.
Solutions?
1. Removing the bottle prior to cold conditioning in the Brewbucket would result in the same amount of air being sucked back in. Not good as I'm on a reduced oxygen regime.
2. Transferring to intermediate cold conditioning keg in a non-02 environment would work but double handling and loss of beer.
3. Collecting CO2 into bag towards the end of fermenting and letting this get sucked back into headspace of FV.
I tend to go with #3 and looking at attaching a bag (e.g just large common freezer type bag) tightly taped to end of hose. Fermentation slows to a crawl, bag slowly inflates, then deflates as gas later sucked back in. We only need about a litre capacity I'd guess.
Fermenting under pressure in a closed system? Yup got all that already, with a modified cornie and a spunding valve, just talking about using a Brewbucket. And of course this situation would arise with most other FV types used to cold condition in FV including cling wrap.
Anyone done anything similar?
With my SS Brewbucket I'd been using an old fashioned two piece airlock, but since San Diego Super Yeast came back I've been doing the following "blowoff" arrangement, as a precaution (not needed as it happens);
As you can see, a 1.25L springwater bottle half full - with springwater as it happens, just drain of half for kitchen use then pop the hose in.
This works fine, perfect seal on the lid and bung so it's a good method of monitoring progress as I can't see into the FV and fairly kitten proof.
Now after the bloops subside to one every half minute or so I've been reducing to near zero for a week then transferring into a CO2 filled keg. Last three brews the blowoff bottle has been empty on keg transfer.
First two times I thought "strange".
Yesterday the penny dropped, as it should have done, and I thought "****, Bribie, how could you have missed that one".
Clearly on cooling, the volume of the beer has decreased and also the volume of the gas in the headspace - I mean the volume occupied by the molecules of the gas - and there has been "suck back" - to the tune of about half a litre per brew in this case.
No deleterious effects on the beers that I noticed - there has been some slight dilution of course but I've escaped infections as the system has been pretty sterile to begin with. I'm just concerned that after the suck back of the water, then some air would probably been sucked in as well. Nasty 02.
Solutions?
1. Removing the bottle prior to cold conditioning in the Brewbucket would result in the same amount of air being sucked back in. Not good as I'm on a reduced oxygen regime.
2. Transferring to intermediate cold conditioning keg in a non-02 environment would work but double handling and loss of beer.
3. Collecting CO2 into bag towards the end of fermenting and letting this get sucked back into headspace of FV.
I tend to go with #3 and looking at attaching a bag (e.g just large common freezer type bag) tightly taped to end of hose. Fermentation slows to a crawl, bag slowly inflates, then deflates as gas later sucked back in. We only need about a litre capacity I'd guess.
Fermenting under pressure in a closed system? Yup got all that already, with a modified cornie and a spunding valve, just talking about using a Brewbucket. And of course this situation would arise with most other FV types used to cold condition in FV including cling wrap.
Anyone done anything similar?
OH FERMENTATION !
