A Rookie's Mistake and Transferring Woes

aero-spaced-out · Sep 5, 2024

This is more of a vent than a discussion but feel free to jump in if you wish to discuss or jest

Boy oh boy did I only go and do it.

The first ever all grain lager I brewed was packaged lovely in a 20L oxebar keg with a constant 15psi on it for carbonation. Every once in a while giving it a shake to help to try to boost it along to where I wanted it
It had been there for a few days and was it not just coming together.
The carbonation was almost perfect, the clarity was near Crystal and I decided to boast to a few work colleagues in my new job about it and how proud I was so they asked to try some.

A leaving due is happening tomorrow so we're locking up shop a touch early and I was to bring a small keg down to let them all try it before we went properly out on the lash. It was the perfect opportunity.

And then I only went and done it.

Didn't drop the pressure for transfer.
Left the PRV of the receiving keg open.

I may as well have shaken a bottle of.coke and cracked the lid.

Receiving oxebar keg filled with foam and it shot (literally shot) out the PRV
Had to play with it for a while before the foam calmed and I was left with liquid.
Got myself a pint of it from the pluto gun as a trial which i had been using all week with no issues
And it was nothing but foam and flat beer.

And to top it off

I have ran out of CO2 so I can't do anything except a quick force carbonation tomorrow before I bring the keg down.

A disaster is the only way I can think to describe how this event to show off my own beer for the first time is going to go.
I'm annoyed
I'm embarrassed
I feel like i just undone an entire week and a half of work leading up to this point.

Baldylocks Brewery · Sep 6, 2024

lol hope you managed to recover enough for the team to sample.
Other than that slip up are you liking the oxebars?

MashBag · Sep 6, 2024

aero-spaced-out said:
I'm annoyed
I'm embarrassed
I feel like i just undone an entire week and a half of work leading up to this point.

You got it a hell of a lot further than they did.

Keep grinning.

aero-spaced-out · Sep 7, 2024

Baldylocks Brewery said:
lol hope you managed to recover enough for the team to sample.

MashBag said:
You got it a hell of a lot further than they did.

Keep grinning.

Yeah I cleaned up and finished the transfer anyway. Got about 6L of the beer into the 8L keg.
Done a bit of a force carbonation and actually over carbed the beer to my dismay so wasted a bit more trying to get it back out of solution. Once I found the middle ground though it ended up working out pretty well.
The team enjoyed the beer so even with the mess ups, I'm taking it as a win. Lesson well learned for next time though about transferring carbed beer and how not to do it

Baldylocks Brewery said:
Other than that slip up are you liking the oxebars?

I really like the oxebar kegs. They are handy, not too difficult to clean and they get the job done. It was a great cheaper way to start kegging so I'm going to run with them for as long as I can before moving up to cornys just due to the price of a corny.

I've seen on the Brülosophy YouTube channel an idea that a guy used to daisy chain them together and generate his own CO2 out of then for things like transferring and cleaning so I'll probably buy a few more for that purpose at some point.
Overall though would recommend them if you're like myself and wanted to try kegging out before investing in the cornys.

Twostage · Sep 7, 2024

If we didn't make mistakes we wouldn't learn anything.

Baldylocks Brewery · Sep 8, 2024

aero-spaced-out said:
Yeah I cleaned up and finished the transfer anyway. Got about 6L of the beer into the 8L keg.
Done a bit of a force carbonation and actually over carbed the beer to my dismay so wasted a bit more trying to get it back out of solution. Once I found the middle ground though it ended up working out pretty well.
The team enjoyed the beer so even with the mess ups, I'm taking it as a win. Lesson well learned for next time though about transferring carbed beer and how not to do it

I really like the oxebar kegs. They are handy, not too difficult to clean and they get the job done. It was a great cheaper way to start kegging so I'm going to run with them for as long as I can before moving up to cornys just due to the price of a corny.

I've seen on the Brülosophy YouTube channel an idea that a guy used to daisy chain them together and generate his own CO2 out of then for things like transferring and cleaning so I'll probably buy a few more for that purpose at some point.
Overall though would recommend them if you're like myself and wanted to try kegging out before investing in the cornys.

Hi Aero, yes I’m having the same thought about kegs cost vs Oxibar and fancy having a trial. Did you go all in with the gas bottle or 16g cartridge?
Cheers

aero-spaced-out · Sep 9, 2024

Baldylocks Brewery said:
Hi Aero, yes I’m having the same thought about kegs cost vs Oxibar and fancy having a trial. Did you go all in with the gas bottle or 16g cartridge?
Cheers

I have a bit of a strange setup with mine. Im using a sodastream on the Kegland MK4 Reg with the ***deluxe*** sodastream adapter.
Please note the emphasis I am putting on the deluxe adapter.
I tried the normal adapter that arrived with the reg from BKT not thinking much of it when I ordered it and I didn't even get to properly try it before deciding I was going to buy the deluxe one.
You will lose CO2.
It will scare the hell out of you if you aren't expecting it.
It will get expensive. (More expensive than it already is running a setup exclusively with sodastream CO2)
I wasted almost half a bottle of my first one just trying to get it on and tightened enough to seal. It didn't improve much with a second bottle even after I understood fully what I had to do and still wasted some precious CO2.
The deluxe one allows you to do that before you tighten the thumbscrew that controls the bottle opening pin. It also means you can close it and only dump the gas that's left in the reg itself. Hugely beneficial and worthy purchase.

The MK4 reg with that attachment gives me the choice of moving to a 2kg cannister eventually when I get over the fear of how much money I have spent in the last 2 months on my new obsession.
My problem is also I'm not sure how that will fit into my Fermentation Fridge with a keg to carb but I guess only time will tell.

Now onto the kegs themselves.

Here are a couple of things worth noting about the Keg sizes.
20L are solid and stable. Although the handles can make Balllocks a bit of a faff. Still handy enough to get on and off but you don't have full 360° turn on it. They come with a sticker for volume sizes that I should probably put on mine at some point which makes it easier for tracking your volumes left

8L and 4L, as has been mentioned in other posts, fall over when they are empty if you have a Ball lock with a tube or something connected to them.
So in my situation that means that if the keg goes, so goes my regulator and Sodastream bottle with it.
Which actually caused me to damage my low pressure reg.

All of them are rated to 58PSI which is great for force carbing too.

So far, I can't fault them at all.

If you get/have the MK4 reg I can't stress enough to spend the extra 20/30 £sterling and get the gauge guard.
Currently waiting on my replacement gauge and new guard arriving from AliExpress in the next two weeks.

I'm considering getting/making a neoprene sodastream cosy and sewing a long velcro strap so I can velcro it to the 20L or 8L.
As you can imagine this would be wildly impractical for the 4L so I am also waiting on a 16g charger reg arriving too.

I went on a bit of a tangent there so I hope I answered your question adequately lol. If not ask away any specifics I'll do my best to answer.

Baldylocks Brewery · Sep 10, 2024

aero-spaced-out said:
I have a bit of a strange setup with mine. Im using a sodastream on the Kegland MK4 Reg with the ***deluxe*** sodastream adapter.
Please note the emphasis I am putting on the deluxe adapter.
I tried the normal adapter that arrived with the reg from BKT not thinking much of it when I ordered it and I didn't even get to properly try it before deciding I was going to buy the deluxe one.
You will lose CO2.
It will scare the hell out of you if you aren't expecting it.
It will get expensive. (More expensive than it already is running a setup exclusively with sodastream CO2)
I wasted almost half a bottle of my first one just trying to get it on and tightened enough to seal. It didn't improve much with a second bottle even after I understood fully what I had to do and still wasted some precious CO2.
The deluxe one allows you to do that before you tighten the thumbscrew that controls the bottle opening pin. It also means you can close it and only dump the gas that's left in the reg itself. Hugely beneficial and worthy purchase.

The MK4 reg with that attachment gives me the choice of moving to a 2kg cannister eventually when I get over the fear of how much money I have spent in the last 2 months on my new obsession.
My problem is also I'm not sure how that will fit into my Fermentation Fridge with a keg to carb but I guess only time will tell.

Now onto the kegs themselves.

Here are a couple of things worth noting about the Keg sizes.
20L are solid and stable. Although the handles can make Balllocks a bit of a faff. Still handy enough to get on and off but you don't have full 360° turn on it. They come with a sticker for volume sizes that I should probably put on mine at some point which makes it easier for tracking your volumes left

8L and 4L, as has been mentioned in other posts, fall over when they are empty if you have a Ball lock with a tube or something connected to them.
So in my situation that means that if the keg goes, so goes my regulator and Sodastream bottle with it.
Which actually caused me to damage my low pressure reg.

All of them are rated to 58PSI which is great for force carbing too.

So far, I can't fault them at all.

If you get/have the MK4 reg I can't stress enough to spend the extra 20/30 £sterling and get the gauge guard.
Currently waiting on my replacement gauge and new guard arriving from AliExpress in the next two weeks.

I'm considering getting/making a neoprene sodastream cosy and sewing a long velcro strap so I can velcro it to the 20L or 8L.
As you can imagine this would be wildly impractical for the 4L so I am also waiting on a 16g charger reg arriving too.

I went on a bit of a tangent there so I hope I answered your question adequately lol. If not ask away any specifics I'll do my best to answer.

Thank you Aero, that has been so insightful and answered many of my questions in one go.
Just a couple of questions remain if you would be kind enough:
Can you lay any of the sizes you have horizontally in a fridge?
What is the 2kg canister you mentioned?
I’ll go have a look at the deluxe regulator now cheers

aero-spaced-out · Sep 10, 2024

Baldylocks Brewery said:
Thank you Aero, that has been so insightful and answered many of my questions in one go.

No worries!

Baldylocks Brewery said:
Just a couple of questions remain if you would be kind enough:
Can you lay any of the sizes you have horizontally in a fridge?

that would really be dependent on the size of the fridge I suppose... in my case, only the 4L
Wouldn't really be something I could imagine doing though unless I had a specific purpose for doing so. Would it be for storage purposes?

Baldylocks Brewery said:
What is the 2kg canister you mentioned?

A 2kg cannister of CO2.
https://www.geterbrewed.com/co2-cylinder-2-kg/

Perfect example right there. These are available in this size from my local gas supplier too.
the MK4 regulators can hook onto these directly with no adapter AFAIK as this is what they were made for. That is as long as your reg is a CO2 specific reg.

Baldylocks Brewery said:
I’ll go have a look at the deluxe regulator now cheers

It was definitely a worthwhile purchase for me, others may disagree but each to their own.

Baldylocks Brewery · Sep 10, 2024

aero-spaced-out said:
hat would really be dependent on the size of the fridge I suppose... in my case, only the 4L
Wouldn't really be something I could imagine doing though unless I had a specific purpose for doing so. Would it be for storage purposes?

Hi Aero, yes was thinking of storing horizontally but I’ve been looking at the dimensions and measuring my beer fridge and it doesn’t work

The gas bottle looks ideal so I’ll have to find my local supplier.
So thanks for all the info as I’m set on the keg kit list but I think I will need another fridge as the one I have is too short and narrow for two kegs side by side.

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