Ss BrewTech UniTank Filtering and Kegging 

Hey, better late than never, but I have several tips for you. 25 year homebrewer turned pro brewer here. As one poster said below, you will need to purge **all** of the O2 from your filter and keg before you transfer. Especially for hoppy beers, you'll get oxidation and staling effects within a few days that can and will ruin your great batch of beer. Tip 1: If you're going to use a canister filter, I'd suggest completely assembling it and hooking it up to your fermenter's blowoff line during the second half of fermentation (after high kraeusen), and let the CO2 from the ferm flow through it. This will naturally displace all the O2 over the course of a few days, and doesn't waste any of your bottled CO2. You can also completely fill the filter with sanitizer and push it out with CO2. If you do this, don't use an iodine-based sanitizer. I use peracetic acid, but that's usually only available on the pro level. Tip 2: When sanitizing your keg, *completely* fill the keg with sanitizer (StarSan is fine here), and push it out with CO2. This will eliminate any trace of O2 in your keg. If you already do this, good on ya. Tip 3: Once everything is hooked up and you're ready to transfer, pressurize your filter, receiving keg, and lines to the exact same pressure as your fermenter. Open all the lines, and then begin bleeding off pressure slowly from the receiving keg. Blasting beer through the lines and filter will only break all of your CO2 out of solution that you worked so hard to put in, and will make your receiving keg a foamy mess. You want to take at least 10-15 mins to fill a keg if you're filtering. Slow and quiet is the key here. Tip 4: Have a dump keg handy. When you first begin the transfer, hook your liquid out line to a pressurized dump keg until the beer runs clear, then switch it over to your receiving keg. You'll waste a pint or so, but this ensures that you're only pushing liquid, and not any O2. Tip 5: Before doing Tip 4, position your racking arm at about 4 o'clock, and as you're slowly pushing beer into the dump keg, rotate the arm up toward 3 o'clock until you see the flow clear a bit. This will make your filter do less work. Use a teflon filter on the racking arm valve if you don't already. These will make rotation of the valve possible while tightened. Silicone or EPDM gaskets can't rotate once tightened. Tip 6: For your fementer, make sure you crash cool, then harvest or dump yeast from the cone, *then* carb. Carbing before you've cleared the cone will only stir up a lot of sediment that you then have to deal with. Tip 7: (Last one). Get a carbonation chart (they're all over the internet), and set your regulator based on your crash temp before you carbonate. 18 PSI and 36 degrees will give you 3.28 volumes of CO2 in your finished beer, which is extremely high. I aim for about 2.4 volumes for most beers, especially dark ones like you have there. At 36 degrees you want to be at about 10 psi. Once it's in, CO2 is hard to get out without a lot of time and effort. Anyway, I hope this helps. Cheers, Jay

Fantastic video sir! You just earned yourself a subscriber. I’ve been contemplating buying this very unitank, and I believe this video just persuaded me.

Dude that’s awesome!!! I have to try a batch

When I'm doing closed pressure transfers to a keg, I'll actually purge the keg with CO2 and allow it to escape through the dip tube, ball lock fitting, and TC flange on the conical side to reduce the risk of oxygen exposure. Also I would grab a spare ball lock gas fitting and let the keg vent to atmosphere during the transfer rather than burping it using the PRV on the lid. The difference in pressure between the two vessels is what moves the beer, so if your conical is at 18 PSI, trying to rack into a vessel that is also at 18 PSI, ain't nothing gonna move! 18PSI and atmospheric pressure? It's gonna haul ass. I usually transfer at 8PSI and it takes about 5 minutes. Oh and added bonus of venting the gas post to atmosphere? Clear telltale that the keg is full. Just be sure to disassemble and clean it well when the keg kicks. Filtering looks super effective! I've got a heavily dry hopped IPA burning a hole in my beersmith recipes so I'll have to invest in one of those housings before that brew day. Cheers!

Just stumbled upon this video. Great job and it may push me to get this unitank. Question, the filter doesn’t cause the co2 to come out of suspension and foam like crazy?

Nice vid, thanks. How do you know when the keg is full? I assume you want to leave some heads pace and not fill it right up?

Can you go into more details about the Unitank pressure setting and the co2 tank setting and the the keg pressure setting? From what I understand the keg needs to be pressurized as well to help prevent foaming. So say the Unitank is set at 15psi is your co2 tank set at the same psi or what psi do you set it to, to push the beer? What’s should be the difference psi setting between the Unitank and keg? I’m not seeing very much clear information on this out there. Also did you ferment under pressure and at what point do you close everything off to start pressure fermentation with the yeast co2?

is it possible to use multiple filters at the same time let's say 3 filters before it gets to the kegs ? the first filter should be 5 micron goes to > the second filter 1 micron goes to > the last filter 0.5 micron that goes to > the keg

What is the rating of that filter? 1 micron, 5 micron, etc? And absolute or nominal? Last time I tried that setup with carbonated beer, it just foamed up in the filter/lines and ended up with foamy beer in the keg.

Gelatin finings would be cheaper, easier and you would run less risk of oxygenating your beer. Plus, you spent all that money on the fancy unitank, you should be able to crash your beer out to be pretty clear on it's own lol.

I like the setup! Do you lose a lot of carbonation through the filter though?

Great video. I see that you force carb your beer. I have the same tank and I do a slow carb to get it to about 15PSI and then let it sit for about 7 - 14 days or longer. However, I transfer to bottles with a Blichmann beer gun. I am finding that even though the beer is great, some people like to have a good carb head on the beer when poured and I have not achieved that yet. Any recommendations?

Nice way to oxidize your beer!!!

Awesome! Keep up the Unitank vids! What are you using to cool the beer? Is it a glycol chiller or something homemade?

Question for you, I didn't see anyone ask it below. Is the filter able to be used multiple times, or is it a one shot deal? Awesome setup, love the idea! Amazing to see the side by side of filtered and unfiltered! Thanks for the video!

How do you have the FTSs temp controller mounted on your unitank?

Do You sanitize the filter and hoses? If so how do you do that? Cheers

What size is that UniTank?

You need to purge the hose and filter of O2 first. You just pushed all the O2 from that filter into your purged keg. You should run off a few ounces of beer first. Or…why not just cold crash, add gelatin, wait a few days during carbonation to transfer. After crashing and adding gelatin, that filter is entirely unnecessary. I get crystal clear beer in my keg doing it that way. Seems an unnecessary step and another way to oxygenate your beer. Which defeats the purpose of a unitank. Just my .02. At a minimum though…purge that filter first.