Closed Transferring From Keg to Carboy Problems

[Evan B]

Tried this once, and just went back to using an autosiphon. I see no reason not to do it that way. The closed transfer is just a huge pain in the ass

[mr x]

It sounds to me like the keg isn't venting if you are popping the nipple.

There's nothing wrong with closed transfers. I do them all the time, although I use a good quality AQ pump with a filter.

[brewinhard]

Don't you need to vent the pressure relief valve on the keg to get it to start filling up?

[bcmaui]

It sounds to me like the keg isn't venting if you are popping the nipple.

There's nothing wrong with closed transfers. I do them all the time, although I use a good quality AQ pump with a filter.

Do you use the racking cane and connect to the "in" port on the corny as shown in the photos above and use the aquarium pump to blow the air in to start the siphon?

I like the idea of using the sanitized dip tube in the keg instead of a hose and I would like to start doing closed transfers from a carboy to a keg, but not quite sure the best way to do it.

[bcmaui]

Don't you need to vent the pressure relief valve on the keg to get it to start filling up?

In the photo he has a connector on the "gas" post without any hose attached to it - I assume that is allowing the keg to vent if it is pushed down all the way.

[herbaljoe]

so, I'm trying to keg a batch of beer through a closed transfer and am about to just trash the entire thing and start buying beer again.

I have 5 gallons of beer in a glass carboy. I have a carboy cap on it with my racking cane in.

I have a satitary air filter in one of the carboy cap outlets and to that I have my CO2 hooked up to.

The racking cane comes out the other carboy cap outlet and to the end of that I have a piece of tubing that goes to a beer out connector on the beer out side of the keg. On the other post I just have a gas in connector to vent the keg as it fills since the keg lid doesn't have a PRV.

When I turn the CO2 on nothing happens....the carboy cap starts leaking and when I seal it, no beer is transferred into the keg. If I vent through the carboy cap, there's a loud woosh as the CO2 in the carboy escapes.

so, what the fuck am I doing wrong?

Matt, this is exactly how I always transfer from carboy to keg and it works great for me 95% of the time. The 5% when it doesn't work so well is when I get hop matter stuck in the disconnect attached to the keg. Assuming you have everything connected right (which it sounds like you do) then this is the only thing I can think of that might be causing the problem. I see that you are using pin lock connectors and I use ball lock, so there may be some subtle differences there, but in my case I've found that even a small amount of hop matter will clog these suckers relatively easily. I keep one or two spares on hand and sanitized during the racking process in case I need to swap it out. If you have a lot of hop matter suspended in the beer try chilling the beer down below 40F before racking.

[Brandon]

I use a setup very similar to that. I run mine at like 2-3 psi MAX. The carboy sits on my chest freezer and the keg on the floor. I dont have any problems pushing the beer.

[rhino777]

autosiphon FTW!