Beer Keg Fermenter... How to?

[NumbSkull]

My brother Milt is being a knothead on fermenting. We are doing a ten gallon batch, then splitting it into two five gallon buckets so he can take his home with him. He is not thinking about he does not have a racking cane or anything. Also it is a pain to make two separate starters. It does not make sense but I am going to let him learn this time. What I want to know is how to make a fermenter out of a beer keg. In an emergency we used my HLT keg as a fermenter with a sanitized trash bag over top of it. That worked pretty darned good to tell the truth but it was a bear lifting that beer keg up to where we could drain the beer into a corny. So I would like to figure out a way to make a fermenter out of a beer keg. I know homegrown uses a keg but I am not sure how he gets beer in and out. How do you clean that thing? I was thinking a person should be able to make a lid for the top and use co2 to push beer in and out if you had it hooked up right. Has anybody seen this done? Could a couple country boys rig something like this up?

Mort

[JMUBrew]

Hey Mort, there are several ways to do it. One way is to just cut the top off and use a top on it:
http://users.adelphia.net/~aken75/Ferme ... 20Lid.html

Another is to flip the keg upside down and put a 1.5" (I think that's the size) tri-clover fitting on it with a ball valve on it (to create a dump valve) and then you can put in a weldless valve on the side for racking (with racking arm) and then cut a hole in the top to fit a corny keg lid or the plexiglass lid.

Hate to link to an outside forum but here, this is a thread discussing that:
http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=62400&hl=

Cheers,
Greg

[Brancid]

Hi Mort,

Take a look around this site.

http://www.kegs.com/breq.html

This is the Catilac of all keg fermenters as far as I'm conserned. I figure you're not going to want to drop the cash for something like this, but it's a good site to get ideas. Other folks have done something similar w/ corny lids, since you don't have to use all thoses fancy ass tri-clamps. You may even be able to order a corny lid that's already set up for it from another place...B3 perhaps.

[NumbSkull]

The one with the plastic lid looks promising. I guess you could put some kind of fitting on the lid so you could pressurize it and blow the finished beer into a corny and not lift the keg. Would the plastic lid hold pressure?

Mort

[JMUBrew]

It ought to, if you can clamp it down the right way. That plexi lid does have a gasket under it. Not sure how well it'd all hold if you tried to push by CO2...minimal pressure to push (only a couple PSI needed I'd think) should work.

[NumbSkull]

I was really hoping homegrown would weigh in on this.

Mort

[bub]

If I recall... Homegrown just removes the center "spear".. It's just a split ring (make sure the pressure is released!)
Then he cleans it out real good and puts a stopper in the hole... many of the SS racking canes will reach the bottom of the keg for racking and filling.
BUB

[Homegrown Hops]

If I recall... Homegrown just removes the center "spear".. It's just a split ring (make sure the pressure is released!)
Then he cleans it out real good and puts a stopper in the hole... many of the SS racking canes will reach the bottom of the keg for racking and filling.
BUB

Bub is correct Mort. Please be sure to release any pressure in the keg so that the spear (valve assembly) does not become a projectile. I then as Bub stated use PBW to throughly clean the inside. You do not have to cut, weld, grind anything. I then use a #10.5 stopper with airlock or blow-off tube for fermentation. One thing I am going to do in the near future is to start using 2" clover clamps to replace the stopper method, because although the stoppers make a great seal its a bit of a chore to get them out. I have been using a butter knife to pry them out.

I use a fermtap auto-siphon to rack the beer out of the kegs into corny's. I hope that this helps you and please feel free to Pm me for any other questions you may have.

HH