50L Keg Brewing

[Peter Smith]

I am moving away from my initial single BIAB pot system to a set of 3x 50L kegs.  I am mainly doing this as 50L kegs seem to be very good value for their 50L size, easy to carry with the built in handles and should last a lifetime if looked after.

After doing a bit of research online, I have decided to polish them with an angle grinder and conditioning pads (known as "gator grit" pads in the US).  I have found a NZ supplier of similar pads http://www.seearco.co.nz that fit small angle grinders.   My plan is to start with the medium pad, move to the fine one, then polish with polishing wheels (not shown), starting with a cutting polish (white Hyfin) then a finishing polish wheel with a non cutting polish to give bling.

I will post photos 

[Ralph]

Yep. I have heard arguments for not having 90 deg bends in piping in a brewery for similar reasons... Either a variable speed pump or a grant should work. A throttled pump is likely to be a bit less than ideal and a pump that is undersized and cavitates will be doing damage too.

Definitely aiming for laminar rather than turbulent flow...

[Cain Harland]

Has anyone used a timer rather than a grant and got anything to say about it? You could cycle say on for every 5th minute (or what ever schedule seemed optimal) not throttling your pump. This would stop thrashing in the same way as the grant but would cause suction on the bottom of the grain bed as opposed to the grants nice slow gravity feed. Would that be bad?

I have been thinking about building a system that uses a grant too, probably a long way off. I would be keen to see some pics of yours once built. I recon your sight glass idea will be cool as, would be good to see whats going on but sounds like something I would break.

I was thinking a 5L stainless milk can (5L seems to be the smallest) would make a good one, smaller would be better but you could put the empty switch at 2L or 3L. I would graverty feed from the mash tun to the bottom and seal the top to avoid overflow in case of electronic problems but have a snorkel pipe out the top to the height of the top of the mash tun to equalize pressure.

Any other ideas for a good grant vessel? My requirements would be: stainless, taller than it is wide but wide enough to get hands in for cleaning and putting in weldless fittings, removable sealing top. A 3L vessel with a 2L cycle seems like a good idea to me or is that too big?

[Peter Smith]

If you take a look at a 1200L brew house the grant is about 25L   and the pump is variable speed 

I was told the main reason is you want consistent flow through the grain bed and gravity doesn't vary like pump suction could... and no thrashing.   Off idea of sight glass.  needs to be open top,  thinking you could use a 9L corny....and take the ball bearing out of a disconnect so it could use the pickup and free flow... they are $78 on aliexress.   

So the commercial brew house is a divide your mash tun volume by about 48 gives grant size

[Peter Smith]

Anyone used Reflectix to insulate a mash tun?

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=reflectix+mash+tun&espv=2&...

[John H]

No - but I have seen people use $2 shop car windscreen sunshades for a cheap version of it. ;)

[Peter Smith]

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-sanke-keg-fermenter-conversio...

pretty cool way of getting a 50L stainless fermenting buckets...

[Peter Smith]

I finally got around to doing a 50L Sanke keg ferment, did a czech pilsner, only used tin foil over the top, not even a carboy cap, its worked really well.    I am going to bulk prime and bottle this batch.  Getting a pressure relief value and will cut a spear short so I can try natural carbonation in the keg "on the yeast" while it lagers.   

[Sam DT]

Nice, keen to hear how pressure relief valve goes - have been thinking about this as well for pressurised fermentation for lagers a-la WW without the $8000 price tag. Are you going for a D-coupling to ball lock converter to corny pressure relief set-up?

I've been solely using sankes since the start of the year and won't be going back to standard fermentors - have a couple of 30's for single batches - if you use a blowoff you can stack them on top of each other which is convenient. The orange carboy caps from Brewshop work a treat.

I picked up a couple of old Macs rubberised kegs for my 50L batches as they were going cheap but full SS is definitely the way to go - I think the rubberised ones are slightly taller and thinner which doesn't work to well with my fermentation fridge plus the rubber covers all the sweet bling and means you can't throw it on the burner for a quick sterilise. 

[Cain Harland]

+1 on being keen to hear how it goes.

Will you be pressure fermenting and cutting down the lager time or priming after primary?

How about your plans to transfer to serving. Will you use your spunding valve and CO2? or just siphon?

[Peter Smith]

I am thinking about using a spunding valve for the last bit of the ferment (including d rest and the lager)  so it should naturally carb bit like governors pilsner/lager does but he uses that long pressure column thing..... rather then a spunding value.    

here is his column,  one of the coolest things with no moving parts I have seen in a brewery....

going to keep my czech 802 alive its a good thing great clean yeast