The Mighty Transfer Tee
I really appreciate questions. One came in recently from a brewer in France who bought the Brewery Operations Manual. It was a simple question about how to transfer beer without picking up air in the hose. He was thinking about saving some money and purchasing Letina Tanks instead of conical fermenters, and since they don’t hold pressure you would be pumping the beer out of them to transfer.
I think many of you already do something similar to this, but I thought it might be an interesting topic to go over.
If you are transferring either wort to the fermenter, or beer from the fermenter to a bright or serving tank, naturally you are sending it through hoses. We use a system we call a transfer tee, which is simply a regular tri-clamp tee open on two sides but with a butterfly valve on the middle port. It connects at the receiving tri-clamp opening of the tank that is getting the product.
Before you transfer any product you need to sanitize the receiving tank, and this is done by CIP (clean in place). Essentially pumping sanitizer out of the tank and back into the top through a spray ball, creating a loop. I perform the CIP using a clear hose I get from GW Kent.
When the CIP is complete, the hose and pump are still full of sanitizer. If I am transferring beer from the fermenter to the now sanitized serving tank, I place a transfer tee at the bottom of the serving tank. The two open ends go straight the bottom from the end of the hose where the product will come from, and the side of the tee with the butterfly valve I connect a small length of hose, which goes to a drain. This valve is in the off position.
Next I take the hose that is full of sanitizer and connect it to the opening of the tee. The other end of the tee is connected to the bottom of the serving tank. That valve is closed too. The hose full of sanitizer is also connected to the outlet of the pump. On the inlet of the pump I also have a length of the same type of hose and it’s also full of sanitizer (as is the pump). That free end of the hose, which connects to the pump goes to the racking arm of the fermenter.
I will start the transfer process by gravity first. If both tanks are on the same level and the fermenter is full and the serving tank is empty, beer will naturally flow to the empty tank without being pumped. So first I crack open the valve on the transfer tee that goes to the drain. Then I go to the fermenter and open the valve on the racking arm, and the valve on the pump, which allows the beer to start flowing out of the fermenter, chasing the sanitizer as it starts to flow towards the serving tank. I go back to the serving tank and regulate how fast the flow is by how far I open the valve that leads to the drain. I watch the sanitizer drain out, and when there is no more sanitizer but instead beer heading toward the drain, I shut this valve off.
Now I am ready to transfer the beer. I next open the valve to the serving tank and allow the beer to gravity flow into the serving tank. I let this go for a bit, before I turn the pump on, but not full force, and pump the rest of the beer in. When the last of the beer is in the tank I shut off the bottom of the serving tank and take the hose off of the fermenter. Then I attach a little tri-clamp attached to a ball valve that holds CO2 to the hose I just took off the fermenter. I open the CO2 up to push the remaining beer that is in the hose and pump to the tank, so I don’t waste a drop. Heaven forbid.
One thing I ought to mention. The serving tank, after being sanitized and emptied of sanitizer, I add finings to the tank, then close it up and add CO2. Just enough to create a blanket of CO2 in the tank. If you let the tank alone for about five or ten minutes, the CO2 will settle to the bottom of the tank. When the beer starts slowly flowing into the tank, it mixes with the finings and starts to fill, but the CO2 is on top of the beer, so it isn’t exposed to air.
With transferring wort to the fermenter it is the same process except I am using just one hose full of sanitizer and that goes from the heat exchanger to the fermenter inlet. That’s where the transfer tee is. Before the heat exchanger I’m not really worried about picking up air.
Was this totally confusing? I would like to hear how others are doing this process. I outlined it pretty clearly in the book Colorado Boy SOP, if you have seen it. I know there are always better ways of doing things, so please share.
Where can a transfer tee be purchased and how much if you know? Thanks.