Best 6-7 Gallon Fermentor?

When you drop the cake, there is plenty of yeast left in suspension. Fermentation can still occur during dry hopping, if desired.

Many pro brewers filter out the yeast then dry hop in the bright tank. The yeast hop interaction doesn't appear to be important to them. A small minority of pro brewers dry hop during active fermentation. I'm not saying they are doing it wrong.

All of the above works and the results are different from letting all your dry hops sit on the cake in a sack weighted with glass marbles.

 

I cheapest way I know to get 7-8 gallon is use two identical in volume buckets inserted on on top of the other. Top bucket need to bottomless, that's add 35% - 40% volume. With two 6.5 gallon buckets you get to around 8 Gallon.
Watch out which handle you use to lift the new fermenter.

The conical is hard to move around unless you buy two Floor Stand and my other concern is the ability to fasten it to your fermentation fridge or get the spacial Floor Stand.

 

This makes me a little uncomfortable because it seems that the wort has an opportunity to contact the outside of the internal bucket. That's another surface to sanitize and keep scratch free. Plus, the insertion of one bucket into the other creates some friction that makes me worry about scratches. But maybe I worry too much.

 

Not sure how well this one would remove yeast. It has a rotatable racking arm and I suppose you could rig an extension to get it down into the cake.



Ideally, you would want a valve on the bottom of the cone in addition to the higher valve. The valve on the bottom is the one you would use to remove trub and yeast. They have that on the more expensive model.



Check with owners of the cheaper bucket to see if it's any good at removing the yeast and trub.

 

Anybody have any experience with the 6.5g big mouth bubbler?

I have a few 5g glass carboys and after racking my first big stout to secondary this weekend (from 1 5g glass carboy to another) I realized that for future batches it would be wise to have a 6g or larger carboy in my kit so that I end up with closer to 5 gallons after racking. I would use the BM bubbler for primary only (2-5 weeks max) and then long term age anything in the glass carboys.

 

They're not designed to remove yeast and trub. They're designed to leave it behind when racking. I think the conical bottom compacts it more than in a bucket or carboy. Does that make any difference? Probably only while racking.

 

Maybe the brewers aren't as concerned with yeast hop interactions as they are with repitching yeast that isn't full of hop debris...

 

The cake has different layers in the cone. They tend to use the good layer in the middle. Hops mixed with yeast are at the top. The trub and early floc yeast is at the bottom. They don't harvest the entire contents of the conical.

 

I suspect there is a balance that could be struck. I don't see it as an either/or deal. Pull some yeast for repitching, do some dryhopping with remaining active yeast. Doesn't FW use some sort of Burton Union setup? Please ignore this; I'm just speculating with an open mind. That's pretty much sums up all I have to contribute to this thread.

 

Just as food for thought, I've run into buckets without tight seals as well. This doesn't bother me personally.