The Easy Tap

By Bob Jones    

Since I have been building my yeast up to proper pitching ratios I have experienced as much as 20% blowoff from my 5 gal carboy fermenters. I have decided to switch to a 15 gal Sanke keg as a fermenter to eliminate this problem. Fermenting in these vessels creates a new set of problems, one of which is getting the beer out of the keg without lifting it up for gravity siphon. I have come up with a new method and thought this would be a good place to describe it. First a brief summary of the steps involved. 

1. Brew beer and gravity drain to clean 15 gal Sanke fermenter located in frig. This requires that the bottom of the kettle be located higher than the highest level to be filled in the fermenter. I usually brew 10 gal batches. 

2. Place stopper/airlock into tap hole on top of keg. When the tap assembly is removed, a #11 1/2 stopper fits fine. Now we got a standard fermenter with a 5 gal head space. 

3. After fermentation is complete. Place the sanitized tap assembly into the keg and push the fermented beer out to corni. kegs. This is accomplished by tilting the keg in the frig and inserting the assembled tap into the keg fermenter, then tighten the bolt to seal the tap assembly. 

Now I will attempt to describe what makes this unique, the special tap assembly aka EasyTap. 

My goal was to figure out how to reseal the keg tap assembly without reinstalling the original retainer ring. Looks sort of like the picture below  

 The U shaped clamp is made of 3/4" aluminum plate. It has two notches in it that just fit the lip on the Sanke keg. The original Sanke tap that was in the keg is attached to the beer tap used for dispensing beer from the keg. The original seal for the sanke tap required a special ring that when inserted and pushed the tap assembly down, making a seal with the rubber gasket located on the bottom of the tap. The tap also has to be modified to allow screwing in a 90 deg. elbow at the top liquid out line. I did this by drilling and tapping the inside of the tap. The elbow then provides a place to push down on with the screw. I also placed a copper cap on the end of the tap down tube to minimize sludge pickup. 

 Hope all this makes some sense. Seems to work very well. Before you decide to switch to fermenting in 15 gal sanke kegs, you should consider the weight of a full keg and how you are going to manage moving the beer around. 

 I’ll bring this gadget with me to the next meeting. 

Cheers