Cheap Closed Fermentation for home brews

[ken.allen.1976@hotmail.co.uk]

So I have been experimenting a lot lately with fermenting my brews in a closed system but still allowing to transfer to a second bottling bucket. I seem to have come up with a great system, that’s also cheap. Most people will already have most of the components needed anyway. The only part that is not “closed” is the bottling wand, where extra care must still be made.

I hope the below diagram is clear enough. Important thing to note is the tube inside the bottling bucket that takes the liquid from the input from the fermenter, down to the bottom of the bucket without making any splashes. You will also need to make a hole near the top of this so the flow does not stop.

[Edit] This setup is great for NEIPA style beers or anything prone for oxygenation.

Brew day steps:

1. After brew and while wort is cooling, sanitise and then setup your buckets as below.
2. Add your priming sugar solution to bottling bucket
3. Add yeast to fermenter bucket
4. Remove bung from bottling bucket and purge system with CO2 bulb. Replace bung quickly to not let too much CO2 escape (this is just so not to explode your buckets haha)
5. Transfer wort to the fermenter and place bung back on.
6. Any dry hops can still be added via the top (I use an old tap with tap part removed. Allows a bung to fit and still big enough to pour in hops). Or can use magnets on inside.
7. Samples can still be taken from the sample tap.
8. After fermentation complete, replace bubbler on bottling bucket with a closed bung. Then open the bottom fermenter tap to transfer to the bottling bucket.
   
9. It should now be mixed with the priming solution, ready for bottling.
10. Enjoy.
11. 

 

[Minbari]

It's an interesting idea, although it would need to be reworked for stainless. So much easier to clean and allot less chance of infection.

This would work with a glycol system pretty well too. Just add the coil to the top bucket. I also like the co2 capture for the bottling bucket. Clever

Only issue i ever had when i bottled was getting good clear beer. If you transfer it, to get away from the trub. Then oxidation was hard to avoid. If you just bottled from the fermenter then you got trub in the bottles from stirring in the priming sugar. This solves both

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

Interesting idea. I struggled with closed transfer using carboys and cold crashing in carboys. Both transferring and cold crashing introduce oxygen. So I used a mylar balloon to capture the co2 during fermentation for cold crashing, but I struggled with the transferring part. I came to the conclusion that although I improve overall the beer by reducing oxygen ingress, I was not really eliminating the contact with air. My system was clumsy and took a lot of work.

I have since switched to fermenting in a keg with a floating dip tube. I can either transfer it to another serving keg or use a bottling wand to bottles for conditioning. I can also pressurize the keg with co2 so I don't pull a vacuum during the cold crash. The problem with this method is that it requires kegs and a co2 tank and it's not the cheapest. You may as well just go to kegging with my method.

I think the method you came up with is definitely better than most bottle methods I have seen and you should see a reduction in oxygen ingress.

Thanks for posting!

 

[ken.allen.1976@hotmail.co.uk]

Interesting idea. I struggled with closed transfer using carboys and cold crashing in carboys. Both transferring and cold crashing introduce oxygen. So I used a mylar balloon to capture the co2 during fermentation for cold crashing, but I struggled with the transferring part. I came to the conclusion that although I improve overall the beer by reducing oxygen ingress, I was not really eliminating the contact with air. My system was clumsy and took a lot of work.

I have since switched to fermenting in a keg with a floating dip tube. I can either transfer it to another serving keg or use a bottling wand to bottles for conditioning. I can also pressurize the keg with co2 so I don't pull a vacuum during the cold crash. The problem with this method is that it requires kegs and a co2 tank and it's not the cheapest. You may as well just go to kegging with my method.

I think the method you came up with is definitely better than most bottle methods I have seen and you should see a reduction in oxygen ingress.

Thanks for posting!

No worries. So far I’ve had good success and no oxygenated beer. Not completely full proof but I think it works well. Certainly for a budget