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  • Car and keg from a fermenter?

    Can you Force carb in a fermenter and keg from one? MY Board wants to know if we could save money buy not buying bright tanks to keg from. Sorry if this is stupid im new to this.

  • #2
    Ok. Better. Yes. and yes. Need a carb stone in the fermenter and standard kegging from a pressurized tank. There's more...but basically the answers are yes and yes.

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    • #3
      So why spend the extra $ on a bright tank?
      Last edited by jcmccoy; 01-06-2014, 08:07 PM.

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      • #4
        So...you can carb and clear a beer in a fermenter. BUT, you can't ferment in a bright tank. (well, you could, but it would be ugly). It's about turning beers and tank space. Move the beer and brighten it in the brite tank. While you wait, brew and ferment another. You will tie up your fermenter if you use it as a brite tank.... Without a brite you will have a bottleneck in your brewing schedule....

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        • #5
          Thanks I found this post to help understand further how it can work.

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          • #6
            Good reasons to have one or more brites:

            The big one: you want to serve directly out of the brites. You can't brew the next batch in a tank that's full of finished beer.
            Your kegging area is separate from your fermentation area and having a brite closer to your racking setup would be convenient
            You don't have enough cold room space, so you need bulk cold storage space from jacketed brites.
            You filter your beers and need somewhere for the beer to filter into from the uni
            You want the flexibility of being able to fine in-line and let the beer clear up in the brite
            Brites are usually a little cheaper than uni's.

            Bad reasons

            Several of the above can just as easily be served by using uni-tanks fitted with carb stones.
            You can't ferment in brites.

            We have one brite and it's convenient for storing finished filtered beer before racking, fining in-line, and bulk storage.
            Our largest fermenter is twice its size though, so we use that as a true uni-tank, fining, carbing and racking from the single tank.
            We also will occasionally use the other smaller tanks as brites if needs be.
            Russell Everett
            Co-Founder / Head Brewer
            Bainbridge Island Brewing
            Bainbridge Island, WA

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            • #7
              You will need the fermenter fitted with an extra TC opening to put in the carb stone. I would think the stone would get pretty yeasty. We use about three fermenters to one brite, and with careful scheduling could do 4 fermenters to one brite. We do crash in our fermenters for 4 days after fermentation, then transfer-carb-then package.
              Ron Conklin
              Head Brewer
              Saugatuck Brewing Co
              Douglas, MI

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              • #8
                I recommend an inline or pinpoint carbonation if you are going to carb in your unitanks. It saves grief with carb stones in the tank during fermentation. Another solution I've seen is a carb stone in a long tube attached to the racking arm. Not an elegant solution, but it worked, after a fashion.

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                • #9
                  When I was at Rogue many moons ago, every beer that was not filtered (i.e. Stout, Porter, Imp Stout, Barley Wine, etc) was carbed in the uni via a CO2 stone. Never had issue one (except the one time I forgot to install the stone before knocking out… oops). I have not commissioned my new system yet, but I have stones for all the FVs as well as my two brites. Opens up a lot of options for production scheduling.

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                  • #10
                    Carb stones

                    Originally posted by wailingguitar View Post
                    When I was at Rogue many moons ago, every beer that was not filtered (i.e. Stout, Porter, Imp Stout, Barley Wine, etc) was carbed in the uni via a CO2 stone. Never had issue one (except the one time I forgot to install the stone before knocking out… oops). I have not commissioned my new system yet, but I have stones for all the FVs as well as my two brites. Opens up a lot of options for production scheduling.
                    Is there a reason why you can't carb without a stone, albeit over a longer period of time such as how you would carb a cornelius keg over about 7 days? Does CO2 absorption take longer given the larger volume?

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                    • #11
                      Oh you can do it that way. But it's generally a waste of time. And as we know, time is money.
                      Russell Everett
                      Co-Founder / Head Brewer
                      Bainbridge Island Brewing
                      Bainbridge Island, WA

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by BraveBeer View Post
                        Is there a reason why you can't carb without a stone, albeit over a longer period of time such as how you would carb a cornelius keg over about 7 days? Does CO2 absorption take longer given the larger volume?
                        We have fitted tanks with what we affectionately call a "strap on" in times of need and that has worked moderately well. I wouldn't recommend it all the time but to each there own. Basically we take a carb stone on a 1.5" TC connection and clamp it in a piece of straight hardpipe just long enough to sheath the whole stone. Then we put a butterfly on the front and hot flush back through the carb stone to sanitize. Then we hook up to the side port if there is one, or the bottom if there is not, or there is a racking arm. If we hook up to the bottom we always clarify as much as possible first. Then just open both butterfly's and your ready to carbonate. It's not pretty but it gets the job done.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by BDL View Post
                          We have fitted tanks with what we affectionately call a "strap on" in times of need and that has worked moderately well. I wouldn't recommend it all the time but to each there own. Basically we take a carb stone on a 1.5" TC connection and clamp it in a piece of straight hardpipe just long enough to sheath the whole stone. Then we put a butterfly on the front and hot flush back through the carb stone to sanitize. Then we hook up to the side port if there is one, or the bottom if there is not, or there is a racking arm. If we hook up to the bottom we always clarify as much as possible first. Then just open both butterfly's and your ready to carbonate. It's not pretty but it gets the job done.
                          Oh awesome thanks for that, I was actually thinking about trying something like that. How quickly are you able to carbonate a tank that way?

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                          • #14
                            We do the old speed and bleed method which I know others here take issue with, but we get things carbed in 2-8 hours depending on batch size, tank size, tank geometry, pressure, beer temp, etc.

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