No Secondary Question?

[fotog]

Hello:

I've decided to follow Jamil's no secondary and go straight to the serving kegs plan.
I have 10 gal. of American Pale and 5 gal. of Smoked Brown ready for transfer.
After it's all in the kegs should I keep it at fermention temp for a week or two, chill it and give it some time to clear or force carb it and start drinking it? I know Justin's answer would be the later, but I'm wondering what others do.
Thanks,

Rob

[Homegrown Hops]

What I do is put it in cornies, chill it then carb until I have reached the desired CO2 volumes. I then let it rest for a week or two and transfer to a clean corny that serves as a "brite tank" and serve at will.

HH

[fotog]

HH:

Thanks for the info.
Do you have any problems with it foaming when you transfer it to the serving keg. I'm guessing you use a jumper to make the transfer?

Rob

[DannyW]

Here's what I do, and find there is little to no foaming. The bright tank is on top and the serving keg is on the floor.

The return gas line lets the beer gently siphon from the top keg to the bottom keg. Both relief valves are closed. The CO2 bottle is only there in case it needs a little push at the end to finish. Generally it will start with a short pull on the lower relief valve and finish all by itself.

[linuxelf]

Huh, I've never carbonated in the brite tank. I just push it to the serving keg flat and carbonate it there. In your photo, Danny, where is the gas line connected on your serving keg? Is it feeding the displaced gas to the brite tank somehow?

[DannyW]

I like to carbonate in the bright tank mostly because I don't trust all my cornys to stay sealed with no pressure. If I plan to filter, though, I will leave it pretty much uncarbonated in the bright tank and carbonate after filtering to the serving tank.

CO2 moves from the serving tank back up to the bright tank via the jumper with gray fittings on both ends. Beer flows from the bright tank to the serving tank via the jumper with black fittings on each end.

There is some valving in the middle of the gas jumper. It's not critical, but I use this tube for other things and find them convenient for this operation sometimes too.

Here is a different shot of the same gas jumper hooked up to two kegs for pressure relief fermenting. For racking, the keg pressure tester in the picture get replaced by the CO2 bottle.

If the flow slows down too much at the end (as will happen on hot days sometimes), I can close the valve nearest the serving tank and burp the serving tank relief valve to keep things moving.

Those two ball valves DO NOT have backflow preventers in them, by the way. The thing wouldn't work if they did.

[Thirsty Boy]

Does Jamil even do all that??

The impression I got was that he simply leaves things in the primary for the whole period of time. Then puts it in a serving keg. He is leaving it in primary for longer than normal though so

Jamil's primary = Primary time + Secondary time

then its keg, carb, age (appropriately), drink...

I'm not saying that there is no bright tank/transfer step ever, but I got the distinct impression that mostly there wasn't.

Of course, I might just have it all wrong. But thats what I've been doing so I bloody well hope I haven't

Thirsty

[DannyW]

Does Jamil even do all that??

Jamil's primary = Primary time + Secondary time
then its keg, carb, age (appropriately), drink...

I'm pretty sure JZ doesn't do any of this, but that's because JZ has an infinite supply of fermenters, fermenting space, and patience.

JZ method of 2 weeks primary + 1 week chilling and carbing = 3 weeks, then add whatever aging time is required. This is what I do on *most* of my beers.

Quick method 5 days in bucket + 2 days in tank with spunding valve + 1 day chilling = drinkable beer in 8 days. Not for every style, certainly, but just fine for others.

There is also some lively debate about the quality of carbonation between bottle (or cask) conditioning and force carbing from a CO2 bottle. If you believe there is a difference, then with the spunding valve you can get natural carbonation like with the convenience of the keg package.