Spunding Disaster

[Jake]

So I thought she was going smooth, but hit a bump in the road yesterday.

So pitched SO5 into the keg on day 1 and the valve was hissing for a couple days (4 or 5), then it dropped off, so I assumed it was finished after about 6 days in the keg. I took off the valve, carbed the keg to about 30psi and let it sit in the fridge for about 24 hours, and figured it was good to transfer from one keg to another.

So I tried to de-pressurize the keg (not sure if I was supposed to), and i planned on hooking the CO2 back up at a lower pressure for the transfer, but beer started shooting out the pressure relief valve everywhere. ... so I took the keg outside and cracked the valve and it was shooting all over my yard (as Catherine look on laughing at my dog trying to catch the beer as it shot out). Eventually it stopped and I was like WTF. Took it back inside, hooked up the CO2, set it to 10psi to transfer but wasn't pushing through ... jacked it up to 20 and nothing, next to 30 and nothing, once I got to 40psi and the beer wasn't flowing, I knew I had a problem ... not sure if it is just clogged or what.

So I once again de-pressurized the keg and took off the lid and there was a ton of krausen on top. I'm thinking that I tried the transfer too soon. I used SO5, whereas I see most have been using SO4 .... I couldn't hear any hissing so I assumed the yeast had fermented out, but I think I was wrong on this point.

[fakr]

lol!  good!  it's not just me that got shot with spunding valve crap!  Sorry Jake...but that's funny!

If you want my input, here you go:

when you think fermentation is done (4-6 days), try disconnecting the spunding valve line from the keg, give the keg a real good shake, turn the spunding valve way up, then reconnect the line.  It should rise right up to 10+ psi....let it sit for another day or so to hit the top pressure (probably 24-26psi).
Cold crash it in the fridge, and the psi will drop down around 10-15psi.
release the pressure in your spunding valve and then reconnect it to your keg to get an accurate reading of psi.  Take your secondary emptly keg and pressurize it with CO2 (bleed some off to vacate any O2) to the same psi as your primary keg...even 1psi more would be fine.

Pour off a couple of cups of liquid from the primary keg, then transfer.

Hookup your liquid out to liquid out transfer hose to both kegs, hookukp CO2 to your gas in port on primary (same psi as primary keg), hookup your spunding valve to the gas in on the secondary, and slowly open the spunding valve until it starts to hiss slowly...the beer will transfer...but the slower the better.

If you did all that, then you probably dry hopped, or got a major krausen clog in the liquid out tube of the primary....I'd suggest fitting a liquid out fitting to a gas line and blowing the tube clean, then try tranferring again.  just be careful not to hit the keg with less pressure than the keg or you'll get beer up the gas hose and ruin equipment...unless of course you have a check valve.

[brew]

This paints a cool picture, dog slurping up beer - makes for sticky fur though...

[Jake]

I think at this point I'm just going to take the lid off the keg and cyphen it out. I don't want to risk beer shooting up the gas line ...

But really, I'm not too happy with what's happened. 6 days and there still appears to be yeast activity in the keg ... when I'm doing it in a carboy, most of the yeast activity with SO5 is done at the 10 day range, and I think I could probably keg S05 after 12ish days from a carboy, assuming it's cold crashed around day 10 for a couple days, ready to drink at day 14.

So really, I'm beginning to wornder how much quicker this actually is than going the ole carboy route ... I've kegged S04 after 7 days and it was good to drink after 48hours of being on CO2, so 9 days; you can cold crash S04 after about 5 days to clear, because fermentation is done after about 4 ... i guess the self carbonating in the keg is good because it's pretty much good to drink immediately (from what I understand), but I'm starting to think it may be 25-35% faster at best, but on the downside you can't see when fermentation has completely ended.

I did a stout the day after the spunding valve batch (using S04) and I plan on kegging tonight ... realize that S05 takes longer to ferment out than 04, but most of the experimenting i've seen on here is using S04. I think I can have a quality beer after 8-9 days (7 in carboy, 2 in keg).

Has anyone gone grain to glass using anytthing but 04?
Do you think I'm underestimating the benefits of the valve here?

[Dave Savoie]

I have with 05 my IPA from the comp was good at 8 days in primary 2 days 30PSI = 10 days grain to glass

[fakr]

Personally, I think you just had a bad experience, and should give it another shot.  I was blown away at the quality difference over the typical way I brew, as well as the grain to glass in 6-7 days.

I would really consider hooking up to the liquid out line, but turn your CO2 way up to make sure there isn't any back flow...hook it up for half a second to blow the tube out, let the keg settle for an hour, then transfer again.

I've been using wyeast 1056, and have had no troubles, other than krausen blowing out of my valve.

My first experience with the valve was touchy...had to clean it several times during the first three days until I put a catcher inline...effectively a mini keg to catch the krausen before it hits the spunding valve.

Here's how mine went:

-Sunday I brewed and pitched.
-Monday the valve started hissing.  disconnected gas line and shook keg twice a day.
-Thursday it died down. Disconnected gas line, shook the keg one last time, turned up the spunding valve to 25-30psi, reconnected gas fitting.
-Friday gauge was reading 24-25psi.
-Friday night transferred to secondary keg at 25psi, then cold crashed (next time will cold crash the primary before transferring).
-Saturday tested beer, and it was delicious...naturally carbonated and ready for consumption....in my opinion.
-Sunday, beer was ready for sure and very good.

6-7 days, naturally carbonated.  never exposed to light or air.  quality was much better than with my previous brewing techniques.

[fakr]

By the way Jake, I typically dry hop my beer, but didn't with my first spunding experience, as I had just previously clogged one of my fittings with hops from a previous batch.  they were pellet hops, and I guess I didn't filter them out well enough.

If I was to dry hop with the spunding technique, obviously the grain to glass time would increase in order to let the hops soak, but I don't think I will dry hop unless I used whole leaf hops in a nylon hop baggy.  Throw the baggie into the secondary keg, transfer to it, leave it for a week, then transfer again to a serving keg.  All the hops should stay in the nylon bag and not clog your system.

just a thought.

[Jake]

Dave: 10 days with or without the valve?

Yea I'm just down probably from my experience yesterday ... I was just really surprised the amount of krausen on top of the beer after about 6 days of fermenting in the keg ... clearly it wasn't done fermenting. I'm finding S05 to be a little strange that way. I'm using So5 on that Christmas Ale I'm doing and there was about 4 inches of krausen on top of the beer for 3 or 4 days, and i thought it wasn't really getting much higher (had another 8 or 10 inches of headspace), then this morning I came downstairs and I guess it decided to make a late push, and has made the way into the blow off tube.

This has happened to me before with this yeast. S04 ferments out in like 48 hours, whereas S05 is slow for the first 4 days (couple inches of krauen), and goes crazy at about days 5 and 6, then shuts er down and drops off immediately. I've been warned a couple times to use a blowoff tube with S04, but I find the 05 produces wayyyyy more krausen, and has clogged a couple of my airlocks, which is why I'll always use a blowoff tube. I use a standard airlock on my S04.

[Dave Savoie]

without

[fakr]

Definitely to each their own.  There are definitely draw backs to the spunding valve, like having to have multiple kegs, added cost of the spunding valve and gauge, difficulty getting beer crystal clear, etc.

Since I started spunding, I've been editing recipes to make 30L batches and ferment in 2 separate kegs, to leave lots of head room for krausen.  I think the next batch I do, I'll ferment 15L in a keg, and the other 15L in a bucket.  I'd really like to see a side by side comparison of the same batch, same yeast, etc.   Maybe I can arrange it so both batches are available for a meeting.

[Jake]

Yea that would be cool. Could be a good experiment. I was thinking about doing the same and give the beer in the carboy an extra 2 days to fully carbonate and compare ... then maybe give it a couple more days and test again. I find beer is good and drinkable after 2 days in keg, but great after 4 or 5 in keg. it'd be interseting to see if they turn out much differently.

[fakr]

not to go OT, but I did an experiment with a black ipa, pressure fermenting in 2 separate kegs.  The first one I was by the book, and the second one I pitched a small yeast starter in the secondary before transferring.  I let it sit for an additional 3-4 days, and the difference was quite apparent.
First keg was noticeably hoppier, where the second was smoother and less hoppy.
The point was to try the high krausen technique.  The first one was hoppier and stronger tasting, the second (high krausened) was smoother and more of a quality taste...

[Kyle]

Glad you made it to the back yard. That must have been quite a sight.

I only did the one spunding batch so far, but I plan to do it for many more beers since I got great beer in 6 days grain to glass. However it does seem to change the taste to be less "fruity" and much more "bready" so for my house stout, where I don't want to change anything, I'll continue to ferment without the valve for now.

[Richard]

Kyle - I was thinking a similar thing for my Black IPA. I liked it a lot the way it turned out without the spunding, so will likely continue in that way.

That said the English IIPA (Punched in the Eye) turned out real nice -- Kyle, that "mystery flavour" we'd been discussing is definitely a byproduct of S-04, and not an infection. I'm pretty sure now that it's a large part of the S-04 profile, as I've tasted it in nearly every pale ale made with the stuff.

[Jake]

So doin the keg to keg transfer. Can I do a hydrometer reading? Or would it not work bc beer is carbonated?