Keg to Keg Xfer with gas return

I have heard mention and even seen a picture of a keg to keg transfer where both kegs were under pressure, one was simply higher than the other and it caused a siphoning effect to move the beer. I have inferred this to mean that there is no pressure relief burping and would mean little to no foaming.

Can anyone expand on how this is done?

You would ideally have a liquid to liquid hose, or switch posts on a liquid to gas.

You would have to vent pressure on the recieving keg (I think) unless you want your beer pressurized to 70 psi or so.

Either way, you make the pressure more on the sending keg. The pressure will try to equalize, so you would either have to vent the recieving keg or crank it pretty damned high on the sending keg. (your lines would fail at some point)

jb1677 said:

I have heard mention and even seen a picture of a keg to keg transfer where both kegs were under pressure, one was simply higher than the other and it caused a siphoning effect to move the beer. I have inferred this to mean that there is no pressure relief burping and would mean little to no foaming.

Can anyone expand on how this is done?

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Do you get foaming? I've keg to keg transferred many times with zero foaming using the regular method of burping the receiving keg. You just need to make sure both kegs are cold and pressurized to the same psi.

The description I read about and picture I saw had a liquid to liquid jumper AND a gas to gas jumper and then the sending keg was elevated above the receiving keg and apparently caused a siphoning of beer in a completely closed system (no burping pressure relief).

I could not find many other details but the idea intrigued me, though I don't completely understand it

If you have gas to gas and liq to liq there will be no transfer.

The way you described would work, it would be using the top keg as a burping location for the lower keg as it fills and would be creating a "single" pressure vessel. You would want the higher keg to start at a higher pressure than the lower to produce the initial movement and start the siphon, then connect the second keg to the gas line to begin to relief that pressure back to the primary keg as the siphon effect pulls the remaining liquid from the higher keg down.

At least that I how I would expect it to work. YMMV.

Here is the pic of the setup, the person (another forum) indicates this creates a completely closed transfer using siphoning (due to different heights)

Seems like an autosiphon would be a easier

Pratzie said:

Seems like an autosiphon would be a easier

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Not with carbed beer. You have to provide some back pressure to keep from having a foam mess.

What is shown in the picture would work, however, unless the receiving keg has been purged of oxygen really well you will probably pick up some oxygen during transfer.
I prefer to use a simple spring pressure relief valve attached to a gas-ball lock on the receiving keg and then adjust it during the jump to achieve about a 2psi difference, which is enough to move the beer along without too much foaming.

KegWrangler said:

What is shown in the picture would work, however, unless the receiving keg has been purged of oxygen really well you will probably pick up some oxygen during transfer.
I prefer to use a simple spring pressure relief valve attached to a gas-ball lock on the receiving keg and then adjust it during the jump to achieve about a 2psi difference, which is enough to move the beer along without too much foaming.

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If one were to push a full keg of say starsan out first with CO2 then the receiving keg should be 100% full of CO2.

Can you elaborate on your pressure release valve?

Interesting. Would not have thought of lifting one higher........mostly because the point of kegs is not to lift full ones

I have one like this, well, simpler than this actually - mine doesn't have a psi gauge.



http://www.amazon.com/Control-Devices-Series-Pressure-Adjustable/dp/B007GDY3CU

It's a 1/4" NPT thread on one end. I stuck it on a 1/4" tee with a low pressure gauge on the middle leg and a 1/4" barb on the third leg. From the barb there is about a foot of hose that connects to the gas ball lock. Similar to the set-up on this guy's blog.

http://brewnundrum.blogspot.com/

The finger nut(?) is loosened to reduce the pressure until the gauge read ~10psi with 12psi from the CO2 regulator Any excess gas vents through the spring end on the valve. This way I can carbonate in the secondary and push into the new keg without having to wait for it to carbonate before I serve. (you can get a neddle valve at the hardware store for cheaper - it just let's a tiny amount of gas by at a time but doesn't hold any pressure. The relief valve is also good for priming/keg conditioning in the secondary, just dial in the final pressure you want and it will vent any excess carbonation.

cheezydemon3 said:

Interesting. Would not have thought of lifting one higher........mostly because the point of kegs is not to lift full ones

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Sometimes I just lift the kegs up and down...you know, for a workout. Usually I just do "1lb curls" though.

KegWrangler said:

Sometimes I just lift the kegs up and down...you know, for a workout. Usually I just do "1lb curls" though.

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Seriously though, if you transfer keg to keg, why carb it first?

I transfer (uncarbed) from a keg sitting on my floor into the keezer, then into an empty keg. I guess occasionally you might need to transfer carbed beer, but I would avoid it.

You'd transfer carbed beer if you plan to transport it to a serving event. It allows you to do a set and forget carb while you let the beer sit and clear. Then dump a pint of sediment and transfer to a clean keg. Now you take that clean keg and offroad in a jeep to a camp site and you're pouring clear beer after letting the bubbles settle a bit.

Yes, destination keg will get purged of air and leave it pressurized to about 12psi (whatever the donor keg is carbed to). Lift the donor keg up onto something and let the sediment settle down. Connect liquid to liquid lines (nothing happens yet). Pull the vent on the recipient keg for a second to get beer to flow a little. It will stop when the pressures equalize again. Now connect a gas to gas line between the kegs and the beer will fully transfer gravity only.

Why does it work? The initial venting of the lower keg gets the flow going and fills the diptubes and hose with beer. It now wants to gravity transfer as soon as you give the donor keg a source of vent (CO from the lower keg).

The beer will remain carbonated just as it was before because the whole system is operating at 12 PSIG (above ambient.)

cheezydemon3 said:

Seriously though, if you transfer keg to keg, why carb it first?

I transfer (uncarbed) from a keg sitting on my floor into the keezer, then into an empty keg. I guess occasionally you might need to transfer carbed beer, but I would avoid it.

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My main reason for doing it this way is that when I lager a beer, I like it to sit in the secondary as long as possible before I move it to the serving keg. But as soon as it is in the serving keg I want to drink it. But, but I like to use the "Ron Popeil" method (set it and forget it) for carbonation. What to do?

If the last two weeks in secondary is spent carbonating (or the whole time if "bottle" conditioning, I can jump the beer and drink it in one smooth motion, then in a motion that is a little less smooth, then an exagerrated motion...then I just open the tap and lay on the floor underneath it .

In a way, it's like I'm counterpressure filling a really big bottle. Go slow at the start and you'll eliminate any appreciable foaming in the serving keg. The same principles apply with a closed system jump.

cheezydemon3 said:

Seriously though, if you transfer keg to keg, why carb it first?

I transfer (uncarbed) from a keg sitting on my floor into the keezer, then into an empty keg. I guess occasionally you might need to transfer carbed beer, but I would avoid it.

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For me its going to be to xfer from a 5 gallon keg into smaller 2.5/3gallon portable kegs.

Sorry if I seemed to scoff. There are reasonable instances where you need to transfer carbed beer. Nice thread.

I use back to back picnic taps connected by an old bottling wand tube shoved into the spigots. With fully carbed cold beer, i transfer with the lid off with no foaming. Note that the receiving keg usually is at least half full.

Maybe I'm not undestanding here what the point is.

If you want to keg-to-keg cold carbed, beer just put a liq-to-liq jumper between the two and place 2-5 psi behind the one you want the liquid out of. Place the receiving keg's relief valve in the open position and come back when you hear gurgling.

As other posters mentioned, you'd have to purge the empty keg 5-6 times to rid it of O2 to an acceptable level, which takes way more gas than pushing at the pressures I mentioned.

The pictured setup might save a tenth of a pound of CO2. But I doubt it.

shataway said:

I use back to back picnic taps connected by an old bottling wand tube shoved into the spigots. With fully carbed cold beer, i transfer with the lid off with no foaming. Note that the receiving keg usually is at least half full.

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This sounds like a recipe for disaster. What if those picnic taps separate?

It is a bit dicey but I use what I have since I serve with picnic taps. The whole thing stays together because I have a tap in each hand.

thadius856 said:

Maybe I'm not undestanding here what the point is.

If you want to keg-to-keg cold carbed, beer just put a liq-to-liq jumper between the two and place 2-5 psi behind the one you want the liquid out of. Place the receiving keg's relief valve in the open position and come back when you hear gurgling.

As other posters mentioned, you'd have to purge the empty keg 5-6 times to rid it of O2 to an acceptable level, which takes way more gas than pushing at the pressures I mentioned.

The pictured setup might save a tenth of a pound of CO2. But I doubt it.



This sounds like a recipe for disaster. What if those picnic taps separate?

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In theory The point is closed system transfer with no risk of foaming - I was not sold when I saw it at another forum which is why I started a thread here (I always get the best convo here)

The draw for me was the no foam, my goal is a quick transfer into small keg to take and serve - foaming means loss of carbonation which I want to avoid.

This idea of closed-system transfer makes perfect sense to me -- it's exactly how some of the bottle fillers work, like the Phil's Counter Pressure Philler. After connecting liquid-to-liquid, nothing would flow because the receiving keg needs to move air out (and most c02 distributors have check valves preventing gas to flow back). So you'd connect its gas post to the CO2 tank or sending keg.

EDIT: and the difficulty there is that, since the receiving keg's gas post gets connected back to the sending keg, the receiving keg must be thoroughly purged. And that would take a good amount of CO2 if it's currently filled with air.

I think the best way to eliminate O2 is to fiil the receiving keg with sanitizer (all the way) then push it out with CO2 (any pressure will do). By default, the contents of the empty keg will be exactly 99.9382% CO2 (the remaining 0.0618% is rainbows or love depending on the beer style).

Both the "closed" system or the "2 psi differential" method will result in the same (small) amount of foaming and take the same amount of time. [Recall that 2 feet of elevation difference equals 0.86 psi.]

I think the main benefit of a closed system is that you could walk away from it (for, let's say a snack) and not worry about pumping a bunch of CO2 through the dip tube after the beer is done transfering (like I did yesterday - oops). The down side is you have to lift the donor keg, which stirs up the sediment. This is OK with an ale maturing in a closet because it can be elevated the whole time, but for a lager in the chest freezer I prefer to leave it undisurbed and push with the CO2. Unless you elevate the chest freezer...hmmm...