So as most of you, while you are cold crashing your brew, you try all kinds of items to try and not suck back any oxygen into your brew. I have seen this product before and thought it was cool but ended up making my own, which worked but I know it wasn’t 100% sealed up. For the cost of these items its well worth just purchasing the kit from Brewhardware.com for an easy $19.99. I highly recommend purchasing a few extra check valves, as if you have a brew that went wild your going to want that.

The kit comes with everything you need to setup with bladder tank, from hoses to all the fittings. Was really easy to setup. Before you cut your hose, I highly recommend looking at your setup and make sure everything is going to fit before you cut as it really stinks trying to get the hose stretcher out to make the hose longer again. 8).

I decided to try this out on an Altbier , as I know it needs to be cold crashed so why not try it out. This Altbier kit came from the Home Brew Happy Hour Podcast , as i’m a Patreon member and February’s monthly kit was this Altbier. The brew day went awesome and can be viewed here. I had soaked everything in sanitizer and also flushed the bag with co2. So hooked up the system and left the bag closed for a little bit to allow the O2 to be flushed from the lines prior the inflation of the bag.

After about 12 hours, I usually see signs of fermentation, not this time. I waited an extra day and still no activity. I ended up pulling out the entire setup and found fermentation definitely started but the seal on the lid wasn’t sitting right causing the co2 to escape. That is one thing with these fermentors is to ensure that the seal is flat and set all around. Typically with an s style air lock you can see the positive pressure, so going forward I will ensure that the seal is set. So fixed that issue and had bubbles going in the jar. WOOHOO.

After a few hours checked back and opened the valve to the bag and in about 60 mins the bag was filled up and bubbles going again in the jar. Pretty cool seeing all this.

Overall worked out great, ended up cold crashing the Altbier and you can see over time the bag deflate a bit as the CO2 gets sucked back into the fermentor. Really like this and easy to setup, just need to make sure your seals are good but highly recommend and I have two of these, one for each of my fermentors.

UPDATE Check it out here