Spunding

[fakr]

Once I clean out my spunding valve tonight, I'm going to put my redgreed krausen catcher in line so I don't have to clean the darn thing again.


Pretty funny how many of us have to clean our valves!  and there's John sitting back probably chuckling at us all because he had to do the same thing his first time around...

[JohnQ]

Lol, true, only as soon as I saw a little krausen coming out, I put the inline keg as the krausen catcher to stop that from happening again.
Still thinking about using it as a top yeast catcher.

JQ

[fakr]

Well, the valve works much better when it's clean.  I have a feeling it also works much better with some type of air gap between the fermenting keg and the spunding valve, like another keg or something.  I've cleaned the spunding valve 2-3 times since sunday, and since I put my redgreen kausen catcher inline, the valve seems very accurate, blowing off consistently.  

Here's a pic of my setup...don't laugh...

[JohnQ]

:shock:

Great Job Jr!

All you need is a little coathanger involved in some way...

Seriously though, what process did you use to go about the cleaning of the spunding valve?

JQ

[fakr]

I tried taking the spunding valve apart, but taking the screw out at the end didn't seem to loosen anything up so I cleaned it real good using a pressurized keg of oxy clean.   I hooked the gas out fitting to the keg, put the keg on it's side, covered 3 of the 4 holes on the spunding valve at a time and turned the pressure knob until water spurted out with a good amount of pressure.  repeated the process, covering 3 of the 4 holes until I ran a good 2L of cleaner through  the valve.  I then did the same procedure with pressurized clean water.  

Then I used the spray nossle on my air compressor to spray air through each of the spunding valve holes...I did this with the spunding valve all the way open.

The thing is clean as a whistle and back to accurate.  

I didn't clean it well enough the other few times as I noticed that the spunding valve would hiss, then quickly stop, and then build pressure way above what I set.  I would just touch the pressure knob and it would start hissing again...

[Kyle]

Fakr,
That setup you have looks great!!

[fakr]

Thanks Kyle.  I was hoping to use the inline PET bottle as a repitchable krausen catcher.  It's a 1L see throught bottle so wouldn't be too hard to determine the volume of krausen.

I'm wondering if I couldn't also use it to capture part of the yeast cake from the primary keg by attaching maybe a quick disconnect to the hose so I can attach a gas or a liquid fitting.  

John, you think I would be able to attach this krausen bottle to the liquid out valve, set the spunding valve to higher PSI than the keg, and slowly turn down the pressure to get a nice slow controlled flow of yeast cake into the krausen catcher bottle?  It has a sealed cap on it that could then be unscrewed and poured into a batch of beer...or perhaps even add some wort to make a small 1L yeast started?

[Kyle]

as long as you can sanitize the fittings on the catchment bottle, it should work.

[JohnQ]

Absolutely, swap the line leading to it for a liquid line, attach to the out port and slowly open the spunding valve.
I'd do it before cold crashing and even gently swirl the keg a bit to maximize the yeast capture while minimizing the beer transfer.

JQ

[Richard]

Great setup... very nice

[fakr]

Thanks for the confirmation Senior!  I'll do that.

I'll thoroughly sanitize the bottle next time around as it wasn't this time...and I only added the bottle after getting frustrated with cleaning the spunding valve so much.  since I put it on, there isn't a drop in the bottle...go figure...

and thanks Richard for the feedback!

If you guys have any ideas on how to improve on the krausenyeast catcher bottle, I'm all ears.  I believe I'm going to swap the 2 port manifold for a 4 port, add check valves to eliminate cross contamination, add 1/4 ball valves to each port, and hard mount everything to a board or something...I was thinking of using quick disconnects for the bottle too so it could be easily removed cleaned.

This shit is fun as hell!

[Richard]

This shit is fun as hell!

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