Carboy and Keg Washer

We got a new piece of cleaning equipment and it works great.  It is the Mark II Keg and Carboy Washer and is basically a pump attached to a sprayer tube with a basin and stand.  I ran the primary fermentors from the Pale Ale through it with some hot water and Oxy Clean Free and was pleased with the results.  It still requires using a carboy brush for the caked on yeast from the krausen, but saves time and water and I am pleased with it.  There are some attachments that allow you to run cleaning solution through hoses as well that I will test out soon.

Here's a shot of the 10 gallon batch of Pale Ale with split Conan (Alchemist) and Pacman (Rogue) yeast in the secondary fermentors.

They both clocked in at 1.010 from 1.052, which will be 5.5% ABV.  I used 90.3% Rahr American 2-row base malt with 2.2% German Carared (24L), 3.2% American Caramel-10, and 4.3% American Carapils malts.  The hops are a "clean out the freezer" method with some Apollo, Centennial, Citra, Simcoe, Pine Fruit, Jarrylo, and Columbus.

I will dry hop these for a week and get them into kegs once we kick the leftover Rye Pale Ale from our field party.

Cheers!

Kegerator 2.0

Our newest project is to keg more beer!  I have a new Blichmann Beer Gun that I need to get in the practice of using.  In upgrading the kegerator, I am going to move the CO2 tank and regulator to the outside of the refrigerator, drill a hole for the air tube line, silicone seal around it, affix the gas distributor to the inside of the fridge where it will be easy to access, and have extra room for a fourth keg to condition or possibly a carboy to cold crash on the inside.  I will also shorten the extra gas tubing as it typically gets all tangled up and confusing for what goes where.  It will also be a good opportunity to clean the beer lines and faucets as well.

One recent issue I have been having is hop debris from dry-hopping clogging the dip tube and post, causing a blockage in the flow.  To combat that, I thought of cutting the dip tube, but decided to test out just bending the tube so it is not touching the bottom of the keg.  So far, so good on that experiment as I rescued a half-full keg of Rye Pale Ale leftover from our last big party.  We carefully transferred an IPA and an Amber Ale into kegs and they are awaiting a place in the newly configured beer fridge.

Note: Accidentally drilling through the electric line and having to splice a copper line makes this project a lot more difficult!

Tank on the outside:

Kegs on the inside:

Snake in the yard:

Cheers!