Vacuum Racking Beer

[danielrose]

Good Evening All,
Vacuum racking seems to be a (reasonably) popular method of racking in the home brew wine arena. I wonder if there are reasons this wouldn't work with beer, and if anybody has tried it.

For an example, check out this video.


To me, it seems like a good way to eliminate or further reduce oxygenation. Evidently it does remove CO2, so it may make priming calculations different.

 

[donburke]

he's splashing a fair bit when filling the bottles

bribie had posted a concept of connecting co2 to the top of his fermenter and pumping co2 to have an o2 free transfer

 

[Florian]

Interesting concept. Shouldn't be too hard to knock something simple up with an old handheld vacuum I reckon.

I honestly wouldn't have any use for it though, no racking in my brewery.

 

[danielrose]

he's splashing a fair bit when filling the bottles

bribie had posted a concept of connecting co2 to the top of his fermenter and pumping co2 to have an o2 free transfer

Allegedly the splashing in the destination container (which is under vacuum) helps remove co2 from the wine must.

 

[Bizier]

I like to purge a keg, heat it up with a little twice-boiled water, then seal, then all you do is connect the ball lock to your racking cane and it self primes your siphon.

I used to place a length of hose on the gas connect and draw a vacuum with my mouth, but the above method is better.

If you had a little CO2 on top of the beer being racked, it would be better. I have been too lazy to date.

 

[Guava]

bribie had posted a concept of connecting co2 to the top of his fermenter and pumping co2 to have an o2 free transfer

Yeah, I use CO2 to drive the racking of my beer.

We just drilled an extra hole in the bung, stick a gasline through it, stick the stainless racking cane through the hole for the airlock, plug it into the carboy and apply some pressure from the CO2 tank. Took us all of 5min to construct and has been a super useful tool.

 

[Nick JD]

I wouldn't pull 25"Hg of vacuum out of a carboy.