FV lids, open or airlocked?

[jat147]

Howdy,
I've just finished building 2 new 2bbl FV's from cylindrical tanks with removeable lids. The lids are sat on the tanks, and suspend cooling plates into the fermenting wort to take care of temperature control. The lids have a 1" hole in the centre that accepts the CIP sprayball.

Question is, carrying more than little homebrew brain at the moment, I feel like I ought to stick an airlock in the hole - but have never seen a commercial FV with an airlock?

I've seen open top FV's, but they scare me - how do you hope to keep away flies, etc without being airtight? It seems pointless to go to the bother of sanitising everything if you dont seal the tank??
Am I missing something? What do others do??
Many thanks

[ArmstrongBrew]

Run a piece of tubing from the top of your tank into a bucket on sanitizer. Airlock complete.

[jat147]

Yeah that'll do it - I do like a simple solution sometimes
Cheers.

[Squintymcguinty]

Just to add fuel go fire here in the homebrew brain department, what happens when u need to empty via pump or gravity. Will the water not be sucked up the hose into the tank or worse will air will get sucked up the hose and oxygenate the beer as it leaves the fv.

[Matt Dog]

You need to remove the hose at that point and add CO2 pressure. Most tanks are set up with a ball valve or butterfly valve that can accept a CO2 hookup (usually quick connects). If your tanks cant accept head pressure just remove the blowoff and slowly bleed CO2 through the top to keep a blanket over the beer as you transfer. If you can pressurize the tanks you will want to run an umbilical line between the two to keep the pressure equal during transfer.