Lager fermentation and kegging

[meirion658]

Moring all first time brewing lager and I'm comming close to the end of fermentation in my SS brewmaster bucket. My gravity at moment is 1.017 and I'm now starting the diacetyl rest for a few days.

Once that is complete my intention is to cold crash for a few weeks. Do I cold crash in FV or do I cold crash in the keg?

If I do in the FV I want to avoid the suck back of O2 from the blow off tube. Can I just wrap the end in foil to prevent this?

I'm new to this lager brewing give me Ale all day long!

 

[meirion658]

Anyone???

 

[jceg316]

I would imagine it would be best to cold crash in the FV. Does yours have the bottom drain valve to get rid of the yeast cake? If so just drain the yeast out and cold crash. I think what might be an issue is if you cold crash in the keg, after a few weeks more sediment will drop out but it wil be stuck in the keg, unless you have 2 kegs and can rack the beer off the sediment.

Then again I don't move my beer around that much and lager on the original yeast cake. Probably not best practice but I'm lazy and also don't lager for that long.

Do you have a CO2 cylinder? If so you can put the blow off tube into a sealed CO2 flushed bottle along with a tube leading to the CO2 cylinder and set it to a low pressure, so as the FV sucks in air it's sucking in CO2. You could also connect it straight to the cylinder.

I've seen homebrewers use an interesting method I want to try before my next cold crash: the blow off tube goes into an empty kilner jar which collects CO2 from fermentation, then that jar has a blow off tube into another jar which has a starsan solution in and acts as an airlock. When cold crashing happens, it sucks air from the first jar which is CO2. If I find a picture/video I'll post it.

 

[MickDundee]

If you’re using a conical I wouldn’t bother transferring to secondary as there’s less beer in contact with the yeast, that’s what I do with my Fermentasaurus. I wouldn’t worry too much about oxygen suckback. From my experience (disclaimer - I’ve only made 4 lagers) it’s unlikely to make its way into your beer, especially if you’re able to close transfer into your keg.