I’m trying to rack a batch to kegs. Let’s say I’m racking 300 litres to six 50 litre kegs, if I enter any amount as Volume Lost, I receive an error to say that there is not enough volume in the fermenter to rack 300 litres, with 5 litres lost.
Now obviously we wouldn’t sell a partially full keg, however there doesn’t seem to be a way to rack without items being setup initially as Products.
Maybe I should step back and describe the scenario and ask how to move forward.
We make lovely hazy Hefeweizen. We transfer directly from the fermenter into kegs. No brite tanks involved. We then move the kegs to cellar storage. This is because we’re only renting the brewery equipment in situ and don’t have space for storing our kegs there.
Subsequently, we’ll fill bottles from kegs as required, or sell full kegs. Or sometimes also transfer to smaller volume single use kegs, depending on the customer.
Therefore, I think my question is maybe, what’s the best way to setup a transfer from fermenter to kegs, which won’t necessary be full and also won’t necessarily be the final product sold (although will be sometimes)?
Hi Phill,
Thanks for your message and welcome to the Breww Community. You’re right in pointing out that you can only rack into something once it has been set up as a product, this ensures that you’re accurately able to track stock and sell a racked container. Because a beer product is directly tied to the container, the scenario you’ve explained above won’t allow for 6x 50L kegs with an additional loss to be racked into, as the ‘loss’ represents anything over what the kegs were filled with.
However, we have just launched a new feature whereby cask and keg products can be set up as ‘part filled’, allowing a user-specified amount to be racked into a product up to the gross volume limit of the container. To do this, you can create a product in the usual way in Products > New Product and select the ‘This product is only part-filled. This allows part-filled casks and kegs to be racked and sold’ option.
Upon racking into this product, you will then be asked how much was successfully racked. This product can then be sold as a part filled product or subsequently racked into another product via selecting the specific container in the Containers menu.
I hope this is useful but please let me know if you need any further help.
Cheers,
James
Thanks James.
The approach you’ve outlined would probably work for us. However, overnight, I did think of another approach. Could we setup custom vessel types? For example, we could then set up our kegs as vessels (as well as Products), then transfer from fermenter to keg (just as one might with a brite tank).
We could potentially just classify a keg as a “barrel” or “brite tank” if a custom vessel type is not possible.
When I bottle from a keg, I found the best way is to find that container on thebsystem, and then there is a ‘rack’ button.
It let’s you rack into other container types, and also input any losses etc.
That way it still logs all products, movement and volumes.
Hi Phill,
Custom vessel types cannot be created in Breww but I do like your thinking. However, because vessels cannot be sold and you mention that sometimes you do sell a keg, this may present an issue if you did want to sell what you’d racked into. I’d therefore probably advise that you rack into kegs, as you can still rack from these into other products in addition to keeping the ability to sell them straight away if needed.
Cheers,
James
Just ran into this issue when racking a small batch. We have 5 sixtels and a partial, which we will use inhouse. Found this thread and went to edit that product. But since I’ve already used that product the checkbox is grayed out for it. Now I’m stuck with product still in the brite vessel and would rather not list it as waste to clear it out. Any way to allow that checkbox to be selected after a product has been used? Thanks!
“This product is only part-filled. This allows part-filled casks and kegs to be racked and sold. This product has been used, so must remain a part-filled product.”
Apologies for the delay in coming back to you on this Maggie.
Were you wanting to rack the full volume into a ‘part-filled’ product? If so, Breww doesn’t allow you to do this and you will need to rack into a non ‘part-filled’ product. Please can you confirm? Cheers!
Was wanting to partially fill a keg. For example, if we brew 1 barrel of beer, generally after trub and yeast loss, we can fill 5.5 1/6 barrel kegs (sixtels). We don’t get a full 6 sixtel kegs out of the 1 barrel. I was trying to rack 5 full sixtels and a partial 6th sixtel.
Thanks for confirming Maggie. You would need to make a separate product for the partial sixtel so in total you would have one product for the full sixtels and one for the partially filled ones.
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