Closed transfer and bottling - are they mutually exclusive?

[Spratt]

just another opinion that complicated low oxygen transfers are not absolutely necessary to brew a neipa

I'm with @Pennine on this one. I did a Malt Miller kit NEIPA in 2018 and to my mind it tasted pretty good. Just done in an ordinary plastic bucket with a tap on the bottom. At the end of fermentation I stuck the bottling wand on the tap and bottled away. I primed in the bottle with 1/2 tsp of sugar and I did take the precaution of putting a squirt of C02 into each bottle with one of the hand held CO2 injectors. I can't find one without a disconnect attached but it was like this

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CO2-gas-...514764?hash=item4d4515708c:g:6GcAAOSwiYFXKORE
Malt Miller does a whole range of NEIPAs now but not as far as I can see, the one that I enjoyed in 2018. If you want to see the recipes I can dig it out of my records for you.

As I say I enjoyed it a lot and interestingly my son who was living in Brooklyn at the time was back in the UK for a short visit and pronounced it the best NEIPA he had tasted in the UK, though admittedly there were fewer examples around then.

 

[Wynne]

I thought if the snub nose was pressurised from the priming sugar addition and remaining fermentation then it could reach the 35 psi that it’s preset for - and be carbonated- which would provide enough pressure even after cold crashing to expel the beer? I’m feeling a bit daft now for thinking it was a way of avoiding a cylinder.

We each have to find the approach that works best for us. This is the system that I have evolved which may help your thinking. I ferment under pressure in corny kegs. Post fermentation, I pressure transfer to a clean corny for storage/dispense. When I need bottles, I usually transfer to PET bottles using a carbonation cap against counter-pressure to reduce foaming and maintain carbonation. PET bottles seem fine for short term storage - I haven’t tried them for long term storage. I have also tranferred into glass bottles using a beer gun but even with cold beer and bottles I seem to lose an appreciable amount of carbonation during the transfer (which is not under counter-pressure). If brewing a batch for bottling in glass, I overcarbonate the beer to compensate for loss of carbonation on transfer. I think PET is a useful medium but has a limited life. I find corny kegs to be the most durable solution for both fermentation and dispense. Good luck!

 

[homebrewer lab]

A few more thoughts on this. So I'm thinking I could add the priming sugar at the same time as the dry hop, which would scrub any O2 introduced, or use the second fermenter purged of air through being connected to the first one during primary. Then use a spunding valve set at a pressure that would allow for the CO2 to be absorbed and remain carbonated. The cold crash and bottle at close to 0 deg C to avoid foam, assuming the CO2 released in-between fill and capping would be enough to purge the oxygen from the neck of the bottle?

Anna

I ferment under pressure in a keg with a SPUNDit spunding valve at 5 psi until dry hopping. The 5 psi does a couple of things: 1) suppressing krausen in the keg with minimum head space, 2) providing positive CO2 pressure to keep air from entering during dry hopping. After that, the pressure is set for 15 psi until the the bubbling is one every second and then let it rise to 20 - 25 psi until cold crashing. I usually have to add CO2 to maintain 12 psi with a CO2 bottle or my CO2 generator (basically a 5-gal keg with 3 gal apple juice, sugar and yeast food and yeast with pressure built up to 90 ps and output at 12-15 psi). I can brew anywhere (without access to commercial CO2 source).
Have not bottled in a long time and never look back!

 

[Pennine]

I ferment under pressure in a keg with a SPUNDit spunding valve at 5 psi until dry hopping. The 5 psi does a couple of things: 1) suppressing krausen in the keg with minimum head space, 2) providing positive CO2 pressure to keep air from entering during dry hopping. After that, the pressure is set for 15 psi until the the bubbling is one every second and then let it rise to 20 - 25 psi until cold crashing. I usually have to add CO2 to maintain 12 psi with a CO2 bottle or my CO2 generator (basically a 5-gal keg with 3 gal apple juice, sugar and yeast food and yeast with pressure built up to 90 ps and output at 12-15 psi). I can brew anywhere (without access to commercial CO2 source).
Have not bottled in a long time and never look back!

Thanks for this, I was going to research what pressure to ferment at but looks like you did it for me. what would you say the thickness of the Krausen is at 5psi?

 

[homebrewer lab]

Thanks for this, I was going to research what pressure to ferment at but looks like you did it for me. what would you say the thickness of the Krausen is at 5psi?

I usually ferment 2.5 gal of wort in a 3 gal keg (with about 2.5" of head space) without any issue with krausen most of the time. Can't really tell the thickness of the krausen until dry-hopping which grows to near the opening. I have to release the 5 psi pressure slowly with SPUNDit to reduce krausen build up.

 

[DocAnna]

I ferment under pressure in a keg with a SPUNDit spunding valve at 5 psi until dry hopping. The 5 psi does a couple of things: 1) suppressing krausen in the keg with minimum head space, 2) providing positive CO2 pressure to keep air from entering during dry hopping. After that, the pressure is set for 15 psi until the the bubbling is one every second and then let it rise to 20 - 25 psi until cold crashing. I usually have to add CO2 to maintain 12 psi with a CO2 bottle or my CO2 generator (basically a 5-gal keg with 3 gal apple juice, sugar and yeast food and yeast with pressure built up to 90 ps and output at 12-15 psi). I can brew anywhere (without access to commercial CO2 source).
Have not bottled in a long time and never look back!

I've been doing a fair bit of reading on this since yesterday and your post echoes most of my thoughts. The pressure drop with cold crash is very little to do with the pressure change with temperature in the headspace, and far more to do with solubility of CO2 with falling temperature. So 20 litres of beer at 20 deg has 0.86 volumes equivalent without pressurisation, if chilled to 0 deg C it has double that at 1.71 volumes. This means that the carbonation maintenance pressure is far lower at that low temperature. The pressure drop for a snubnose with volume headspace increase from 14 to 33 litres allowing for trub is only about 3psi. So I think you are right to raise the pressure following dry hop but ideally aim to reach 25psi or above, which should allow it to reach about 8-10 with chilling to 0 deg. Filling using 3/16 or similar tubing about 2m should further regulate pressure to fill the bottles and then cap on foam as per We no need no stinking beer gun... Storage is described as long term over 12 months viable.
I'm also looking at using ascorbic acid at 5g/litre to act as an antioxidant that will further enhance the flavour too.

That's the thought anyway...

Anna

 

[homebrewer lab]

I've been doing a fair bit of reading on this since yesterday and your post echoes most of my thoughts. The pressure drop with cold crash is very little to do with the pressure change with temperature in the headspace, and far more to do with solubility of CO2 with falling temperature. So 20 litres of beer at 20 deg has 0.86 volumes equivalent without pressurisation, if chilled to 0 deg C it has double that at 1.71 volumes. This means that the carbonation maintenance pressure is far lower at that low temperature. The pressure drop for a snubnose with volume headspace increase from 14 to 33 litres allowing for trub is only about 3psi. So I think you are right to raise the pressure following dry hop but ideally aim to reach 25psi or above, which should allow it to reach about 8-10 with chilling to 0 deg. Filling using 3/16 or similar tubing about 2m should further regulate pressure to fill the bottles and then cap on foam as per We no need no stinking beer gun... Storage is described as long term over 12 months viable.
I'm also looking at using ascorbic acid at 5g/litre to act as an antioxidant that will further enhance the flavour too.

That's the thought anyway...

Anna

You are right about the low temperature and CO2 absorption. I am of the school of thoughts that 15 psi is the optimal for most part of fermentation. Raising the temperature near the end is to anticipate for the CO2 absorption/pressure drop during cold crashing. By the way, I always use a floating dip tube, so I can have clear, cold, carbed beer directly from the fermenting keg or closed-transfer to a sanitized purged (with CO2 from fermentation) keg. And afterwards, I would ad new chilled wort to the fermenting keg for another run since my yeast is only one-week old. The second batch is much faster and serves as a CO2 source at 15 psi for my serving keg. This way, I save time, yeast, CO2, money and clean up.
Since I brew 2.5 gallons by BIAB, I can use everything (stove to boil, oven to mash, swimming pool to chill and fridge to cold-crash) in my home, year round. Kviek yeast allows me to ferment at up to 32C - no need for fermentation temperature control. So cool! Everyone can and should do this - pressure brewing in small batch with a keg.

 

[DocAnna]

You are right about the low temperature and CO2 absorption. I am of the school of thoughts that 15 psi is the optimal for most part of fermentation. Raising the temperature near the end is to anticipate for the CO2 absorption/pressure drop during cold crashing. By the way, I always use a floating dip tube, so I can have clear, cold, carbed beer directly from the fermenting keg or closed-transfer to a sanitized purged (with CO2 from fermentation) keg. And afterwards, I would ad new chilled wort to the fermenting keg for another run since my yeast is only one-week old. The second batch is much faster and serves as a CO2 source at 15 psi for my serving keg. This way, I save time, yeast, CO2, money and clean up.
Since I brew 2.5 gallons by BIAB, I can use eveyrthing (stove to boil, oven to mash, swimming pool to chill and fridge to cold-crash) in my home, year round. Kviek yeast allows me to ferment at up to 32C - no need for fermentation temperature control. So cool! Everyone can and should do this - pressure brewing in small batch.

Ok first - using a swimming pool to chill the wort is definitively the coolest thing I've heard all week!

From the reading about pressure fermenting, I'd be keen to keep the pressure to a minimum or none in the first week since the brulosphy site and other paper I read was about pressure suppressing ester production but this is exactly what is looked for in a hop forward beer. Using pressure in the latter part of the fermentation would speed it up and make it less likely there would be residual sugars that would contribute to further carbonation after bottling. I think basically I need to put my money where my mouth is now and get on with trying it. That will have to wait though as I really can't justify buying a new pressure fermenter at the moment!

Anna

 

[homebrewer lab]

Ok first - using a swimming pool to chill the wort is definitively the coolest thing I've heard all week!

From the reading about pressure fermenting, I'd be keen to keep the pressure to a minimum or none in the first week since the brulosphy site and other paper I read was about pressure suppressing ester production but this is exactly what is looked for in a hop forward beer. Using pressure in the latter part of the fermentation would speed it up and make it less likely there would be residual sugars that would contribute to further carbonation after bottling. I think basically I need to put my money where my mouth is now and get on with trying it. That will have to wait though as I really can't justify buying a new pressure fermenter at the moment!

Anna

All you need is any old soda keg, a good spunding valve and a floating dip tube. Here is a photo to whet your appetite!

 

[DocAnna]

I'm also looking at using ascorbic acid at 5g/litre to act as an antioxidant that will further enhance the flavour too.

Quick edit to say that I'll be revising that amount down .

At dry hop: Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) 0.72g per litre of head space mixed with the hops and added to wort
= 10g for a 14 litre headspace on a 21 litre batch in a 35 litre fermenter

This is based on worst case scenario for the amount of oxygen introduced at dry hop and should leave some left over to scavenge oxygen at bottling.

Anna

(the science bit for the calculation:

This paper goes some way to explain why the idea of bottle priming consuming the oxygen through fermentation is a bit of a myth - as is empirically demonstrated in the experiment shown in the video earlier on this thread. It also shows how ascorbic acid is consumed faster and before the earlier antioxidants naturally occurring in beer such as from hops, so protects over a short time. Notably copper trace elements catalyse this reaction, which is of benefit rather than a problem as erroneously reported on another forum as ascorbic acid accelerating oxidation. The evidence is that the ascorbic acid is oxidised faster with copper trace element but ahead of other natural antioxidants.
http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0cf0/53f6b4f7d88d576eda3ae0ca65a927a91d90.pdfThe oxygen in the headspace is consumed through oxidation within a few minutes (less than 10) far before fermentation could consume it over a few days.
Also that 10 to 50 molecules of oxygen are consumed for each molecule of ascorbic acid.

This paper makes the case for flavour stability with vitamin C added to cooled wort at 30mg/l
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2007.tb00252.x
Balancing this with the merit of oxygen at the initial pitch on the exponential growth phase of yeast, and that flavour stability is sought with the final beer rather than initial wort, the time for addition for most benefit would be at dry hopping.

At dry hop: Ascorbic acid 0.72g per litre of head space mixed with the hops and added to wort
= 10g for a 14 litre headspace on a 21 litre batch in a 35 litre fermenter
This is based on 14 litres headspace at 1 bar (standard atmospheric pressure) having 0.574 mol of ideal gas at 20 deg C
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/ideal-gas-lawIf at the time of dry hopping all the headspace were replaced by air as the worst case scenario at oxygen 21% would mean
7.264 x10^22 molecules of oxygen, which would require a 10th to a 50th of the same number of molecules of ascorbic acid to consume the oxygen. With the mole mass of ascorbic acid of 176.12g/mol that translates to 10 to 2 g of ascorbic acid (0.72 g per litre of headspace at most). While the amount of air will increase at lower temperature, it is a relatively small change in density at the range of fermenting temperatures (translating to a difference of 0.07g for air at 10 deg C) so the temperature difference can be effectively disregarded for the air temperature.

Based on 99.8% purity of purchasable ascorbic acid the mass to be added can be taken without adjustment for fillers:
https://www.intralabs.co.uk/ascorbi...qdsAUAsCNrAtzsI5twdEW_-OU7sxvq4RoCbWgQAvD_BwE)

 

[homebrewer lab]

Your post got me interested in measuring the O2 in the head space before, during and after dry hopping with wort that has been fermenting for 3 days under 5 psi CO2 pressure.
I could do this by rigging an optical temperature compensated O2 probe (made by PreSens) through the 3rd post of my keg using my UNI dip tube (see photos) to seal the probe. Would be fun to see if the CO2 released by the wort during dry-hopping would prevent air from entering the keg.

 

[dan125]

fill the bottles and then cap on foam as per We no need no stinking beer gun... Storage is described as long term over 12 months viable.

Had a quick look at the process in the link and there doesn't seem to be a way to purge the bottles before the beer goes in.
I can't see a neipa lasting more than a few weeks packaged like that.
Photo below shows the entries in my flight in the recent Verdant comp - all must have been bottled within a few weeks of judging as the turnaround time was so tight... I think you can see the effects of oxidation

 

[Pennine]

Had a quick look at the process in the link and there doesn't seem to be a way to purge the bottles before the beer goes in.
I can't see a neipa lasting more than a few weeks packaged like that.
Photo below shows the entries in my flight in the recent Verdant comp - all must have been bottled within a few weeks of judging as the turnaround time was so tight... I think you can see the effects of oxidation
View attachment 33990

Do you force carbonate in a keg and then bottle?

 

[dan125]

Do you force carbonate in a keg and then bottle?

Yes, force transfer into the keg, then beergun into the bottle

 

[Pennine]

Yes, force transfer into the keg, then beergun into the bottle

Do you see similar degradation in your kegged neipa's? I am trying to figure out if bottle conditioning is the better way to go with neipa's.

 

[dan125]

Do you see similar degradation in your kegged neipa's? I am trying to figure out if bottle conditioning is the better way to go with neipa's.

My entry was the one that hopefully didn't look oxidised
I take extra care kegging/bottling neipas and they usually stay a good colour till the end of the keg - hop character can trail of quickly though

 

[DocAnna]

Had a quick look at the process in the link and there doesn't seem to be a way to purge the bottles before the beer goes in.
I can't see a neipa lasting more than a few weeks packaged like that.

The empirical accounts of those that have followed the directions in the thread referenced, and the academic references, attest that purging the bottles is not a necessary step, and that it is the duration of oxygen exposure that is the most vital of the issues concerned. The value of purging bottles with CO2 is not at all clear if at all, particularly when the bottling wand is removed it draws air and oxygen back into the bottle which would be capped on if not bottling on foam. In a commercial setting the bottle is (from my limited understanding) filled from the top or in a CO2 flooded environment such that this isn't a problem.

Anna

{edit - though as I've said above, I need to put this into practice and demonstrate it myself really!]

 

[dan125]

The empirical accounts of those that have followed the directions in the thread referenced, and the academic references, attest that purging the bottles is not a necessary step, and that it is the duration of oxygen exposure that is the most vital of the issues concerned. The value of purging bottles with CO2 is not at all clear if at all, particularly when the bottling wand is removed it draws air and oxygen back into the bottle which would be capped on if not bottling on foam. In a commercial setting the bottle is (from my limited understanding) filled from the top or in a CO2 flooded environment such that this isn't a problem.

Anna

{edit - though as I've said above, I need to put this into practice and demonstrate it myself really!]

Really interested to see how it goes and hope it works well for you - keep us posted

 

[Pennine]

Really interested to see how it goes and hope it works well for you - keep us posted

Agree it is good to see different ways to go about reducing the oxygen impact.

 

[James]

In commercial environments you’ll find they cap on foam. The flow is controlled to fill gently with a splash at the end to create the foam. I agree - what is the point of purging the bottle with co2 when you’re going to purge it with beer.
Withdrawing the wand draws in air - displace it with foam, or if you are going for co2 purge do it at this point.