With my 10 litre keg of Yeti now half empty I decided to transfer the remainder into a 5 litre keg so that I’d have the 10 litre plus another 5 litre keg available for Bure Gold (Kveik variant) when it’s ready. Poor planning on my part meant that I’ve ended up with 2 x 25 litres fermenting and only one vacant Corny keg, hence the scramble to free up as much as I can so that I don’t have to bottle a whole batch.
The 19 litre Cornelius keg is getting lighter by the day, so I decided to re-keg to my 5 litre Mangrove Jacks mini and ready the Corny for its next adventure, which will hopefully be my first all-grain brew.
The re-kegging procedure was a copy of the closed transfer that I used to package this from the FV originally
This time I didn’t have a second recipient keg connected in series to protect against overflow getting into my spunding valve, mainly because I didn’t use the spunding valve at all and instead pulled at the PRV on my smaller keg to reduce pressure and start the flow. Taking it fairly easy at the start to prevent foaming, it wasn’t difficult to gauge the progress in both kegs via the condensation level on the outside. As the smaller MJ keg began to fill up I placed two fingers on the top, hoping to feel the temperature difference and therefore know when to stop the transfer before beer gets into the PRV. That worked well too, and because I can’t leave these things alone I gently kept going until the slightest change of tone told me I was about to release foam. Next time I’ll stop sooner – just figured that on this occasion I can always clean the PRV and will probably have drunk the remaining 5 litres before any backwards contamination becomes a factor, if that’s even a consideration.
There was about a pint left in the Corny after I’d filled my mini-keg, so I used the beer gun to decant that into a plastic bottle for consumption this evening. Another successful procedure completed, more lessons learnt. Also, I’m really glad how well this brew turned out and will be buying it again. Here’s a picture taken yesterday showing off that amazing clarity:
#wisdom: PRV on recipient keg is fine for relieving pressure and starting transfer, no need for spunding valve unless you need to be hands-free. If the recipient keg is room temperature and has a sloping metal top then two fingers placed at the base of the top make a sufficient filling guide, provided the liquid is cold.