EOI PRESSURE RELIEF VALVE.

[altone]

What PSI were you thinking of fermenting at?

Depends on the beer style but I've tried ales around 5 psi and was thinking other styles at 15 or even 20 psi

Oh and higher than normal temps too.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Ales at 5 PSI you could get away with, a faux lager at 15 PSI you can get away with dependent on the yeast, the higher you go the more detrimental to the yeast. Initially closed vessel fermentation was started pure and simply as a way of carbing the beer, pro brewers do it but only at the final stages of fermentation. It all started with an article by Teri Fahrendorf, Closed vessel fermentation and went awry after that.

 

[MHB]

Pressure fermentation goes back way further than that, its pretty well understood as a commercial method for getting faster maturation in lager production. Although well understood, it isn't widely used.
Kunze suggests that pressure be applied when the beer is about half attenuated (half way from OG to FG), even than at much lower pressures than some home brewers are using, then reducing the pressure to carbonating pressures during cooling to lagering temperatures (-1oC), mind you its still a 20 day brewing cycle.
A picture as they say... Its an interesting idea but I suspect a little constraint will be called for, fermenting at 20oC and up near 140kPa is putting your dissolved carbon dioxide up near bottle pressures, I would be very worried about the affects on your yeast.
Mark

M

ight be a bit easier to see

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Here is the article which started the fermenting under pressure among home brewers, but what most people are doing now has gone beyond what she suggested. Mark is right it isn't new it was toyed with in the later part of the 19th century using using a blow off tube into mercury.
Pressure suppresses the fermentation activity and I think most of the experts do believe a robust ferment is required as much as a vigorous boil to drive off any unwanted flavours in the beer.
http://www.terifahrendorf.com/Closed-Pressurized-Fermenatation.pdf

 

[MHB]

Yes have read her work, its just a home brew version of "Bunging" a way to carbonate beer without adding priming.
Its a long way from there to fermenting under pressure as some people are doing it. Bunging is only preformed when nearly all the fermentation is finished (this washes out undesirable volatiles, Oxygen...), when a calculated amount of extract is left the fermenter is bunged to keep the CO2 in for fizz.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a PRV you can trust, and wouldn't be applying any over pressure until at least 90% of the ferment is over, without care you risk making keg bombs (like bottle bombs only bigger and lots more fun).

So far I'm not convinced of the benefits of conducting the primary ferment under pressure and can see several downsides to doing so. If people want to use a PRV and bung a keg later to condition the beer, well as long as you know where the beer is going to finish, fine. Personally I would rather rack onto sugar or speice, at a home brew level it should be much more controllable and predictable.

If you are going to be bunging, then there is no way you should have foam going through the PRV (should be fitted well after high krausen) so either a diaphragm, spring loaded or even a gravity loaded PRV should all work, provided you are inside its design range.
Mark

 

[ridge runner]

That cover pic is the set up I'm using but with our bulk buy PRV .

 

[altone]

I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a PRV you can trust, and wouldn't be applying any over pressure until at least 90% of the ferment is over, without care you risk making keg bombs (like bottle bombs only bigger and lots more fun).
...
If you are going to be bunging, then there is no way you should have foam going through the PRV (should be fitted well after high krausen)
Mark

Good points there I've been using a blow off tube for the first 3 days when activity is highest, then replacing it with the PRV assembly.
Only done it 3 times though - just giving it a go and using corny kegs means I can fit 2 in my ferment fridge rather than a single bucket/drum.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

So we have given away some free ones for you guys to try out so hopefully we can hear from you guys soon with respect to what your feedback is.

Five weeks now since the Blowtie's went out, the reviews are a bit thin on the ground, no doubt we will get some of the Keg Land bogus accounts replying now.

 

[sp0rk]

Five weeks now since the Blowtie's went out, the reviews are a bit thin on the ground, no doubt we will get some of the Keg Land bogus accounts replying now.

I do notice that the product description on their site rubbishes spring actuated valves

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Correct, and every review I have seen where people have genuinely tried diaphragm valves in place of poppet has given up on the diaphragm. They will work if one is willing to part with the cash and get the load of the spring in the zone they want. The poppet is cheap simple and works, Kegland would have done better promoting the s/steel poppet they originally were going to run with, I was all for that, difficult to promote now after the rubbishing they gave the poppet in their video.

 

[EmptyB]

Welp, as good a time as any to chime in.. I bought a couple blowties, if for no other reason than because they're push-fit and I wanted to link multiple kegmenters to a single gauge/valve. No dicking around with barbs etc. It was literally plug & play. Tested to 20PSI and all was fine.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Welp, as good a time as any to chime in.. I bought a couple blowties, if for no other reason than because they're push-fit and I wanted to link multiple kegmenters to a single gauge/valve. No dicking around with barbs etc. It was literally plug & play. Tested to 20PSI and all was fine.

You can throttle any valve to a designated PSI what it is that counts is the venting, in the video no venting was shown and any brewer going up to 20 PSI is well in the realms of Muppetville

 

[sp0rk]

Welp, as good a time as any to chime in.. I bought a couple blowties, if for no other reason than because they're push-fit and I wanted to link multiple kegmenters to a single gauge/valve. No dicking around with barbs etc. It was literally plug & play. Tested to 20PSI and all was fine.

Like WEAL said, just holding at 20PSI isn't really proof of it working well
A good test would be to set it to 5PSI, get a ferment going and making sure it vents at that 5PSI and then maintains that level, not deviating very far from there

 

[EmptyB]

Fair points. I did that as well. Had my three FVs linked, one gauge/valve, set to 10PSI and checked it regularly since I'm new to push fittings and was concerned about leaks. Held a steady 10PSI for 24hrs after which I upped to 15PSI and it held there too.

 

[sp0rk]

Good stuff, sounds like they're doing the job well

 

[EmptyB]

I actually ended up hooking a venting line onto the blowtie and taking advantage of the vented CO2 by using it to dispense a keg full of starsan into another keg, leaving me with a fully O2 purged keg. Saved me wasting the bottle gas.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I reckon it must be 2 years since I bought any gas, purely by saving the gas produced from fermentation, I did try once to pressurize the gas using water but water is no good as it carries oxygen, so the bottle gas I use just to get the pressure up on the gas I have saved.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Five weeks now since the Blowtie's went out, the reviews are a bit thin on the ground, no doubt we will get some of the Keg Land bogus accounts replying now.

Hello Wide eyed and legless. The only account that KegLand has is this one that has kegland all over it so everyone knows. If other accounts speak positively about us I would imagine that's because they enjoy the great value innovative products that we make or perhaps our level of service that we offer.

 

[fishingbrad]

This is a fantastic product. I'm on my second ferment in the new 58L Kegmenter. No wandering pressure like a few "know it all's" here speculated. It is a true set and forget.

 

[sp0rk]

This is a fantastic product. I'm on my second ferment in the new 58L Kegmenter. No wandering pressure like a few "know it all's" here speculated. It is a true set and forget.

You're talking about the Bulk Buy valves, right?