Brewing Master

Question:

I Heard that one can actually ferment inside the 5 gallon Corneilus Kegs. Does anybody know about this?  IF so, what are the pros and cons?

Response:

: I Heard that one can actually ferment inside the 5 gallon Corneilus Kegs. : : Does anybody know about this?  IF so, what are the pros and cons? : : : Sure.  There’s a writeup on it in the Zymurgy special issue on homebrew gadgets.  For fermentation, connect a blowoff hose to the inlet (CO2) connection and drop that in a bucket of bleach water.  To transfer between kegs (primary to secondary or secondary to dispensing keg), connect hoses between the two outlet connectors, so that the beer flows up one draw tube and down the other.  Pressurize the supply side with CO2 to make it flow.  It’s a good idea to always purge air from the receiving keg, so that the beer remains in a CO2 environment at all times.  If the beer happens to be carbonated, you might also want to use a counter-pressure transfer method.  Pressurize both the receiving keg and the supply side, make the beer flow by relieving pressure on the receiving side.  This is especially useful if you want to filter your beer (transfer keg to keg as described above, but connect a standard household water filter in between).   Cons — cost of the kegs. Pros — 1) Your beer stays in stainless steel from the time you brew it            until it hits your glass.  No platic, no air, no light. Just            like the big boys.         2) You only need one kind of container — get rid of your plastic            fermenter, glass carboys and bottles and keep only stainless            steel soda kegs.  That gives you more flexibility in how you            allocate them (eg. have plenty of bottles sitting around, but            can’t start another batch because I don’t have a carboy available,            etc….)         3) Can be used to filter by transferring under pressure.   Greg

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