Conical Fermenter question

A conical is pretty much like any other fermenter except you can remove the excess hops, trub any other stuff that gets from the kettle to the fermenter. They still have to be cleaned, sanitized and kept at the proper temp for good tasting beer.

 

I bought a 14.3 gal conical, so I'm doing mostly 10 gallon batches now. The biggest problem is getting the beer from the kettle on the patio to the fermenter in the basement. Still haven't settled on a technique. Other than that, it's all good! Definitely in my top 5 list of best brewery upgrades.

 

In additon. You can harvest yeast from the dump valve. If your batch has stalled, youi can blow the yeast off the bottom with CO2.

 

I've thought about this issue as well. Hoping to be doing 10-gallon batches soon and considered getting a conical, just not sure how I'd go from cooling to getting it to my basement where the conical would be. I've considered drilling holes in the kitchen floor to run tubing down to it. Also, maybe pouring a couple gallons at a time into a bucket and hauling that downstairs in a few trips until the wort is all in the conical. That would certainly aerate the wort a little more! The wheels are turning...

 

All depends on how much money you want to spend. You can have a mini pro CIP brewery if you want to dump the cash. I have an older B3 12 gal conical that I need to buy an upright freezer for, and like everyone else, getting the chilled wort to it is my next main issue. They're pretty light as far as cleaning it out. The biggest benefit is no longer being confined to buckets/carboys and their capacity limitations.

 

I have a 27 gallon conical, and I transfer chilled wort to it ~5 gal at a time. I use two 6 gal better bottles (light and easy to carry) to transfer with (one is filling with chilled wort, while the other is on its journey to the conical. Works well, and the fact that my brewing area is over 200ft from my fermentation area made that an easy decision.

I've got the racking ports in my better bottles so it makes emptying them quite easy: turn them upside down & open up the valve to allow air flow in and lots of beer out of the neck.

 

Additionally with all of the extra valves on a conical, I rigged up a torpedo (ala Sierra Nevada hop technique for the beer of the same name) using an industrial peristaltic pump, a hop rocket and some extra fittings. I can do multiple dry hop additions in a short amount of time with out having to worry about removing hops from the actual conical.

 

Just remember that temperature control is more troublesome if it doesn't come with a built-in unit.

 

Why, most fit quite nicely in a fridge? I even have one that can pump chilled water through to cool down & it works quite nicely.

Having said that, I do actually have a grossly inefficient, but so easy to use morebeer heated / cooled conical I have been using quite happily for years.

 

Electrically inefficient. Thermoelectric coolers are quite inefficient and use up a much larger amount of electricity to get the same amount of cooling as compared to a modified refrigerator.

 

...but are they up to the task? How will a thermoelectric cooler perform in my ~70F basement?

 

Just fine. I use mine in ~80*F room through the summer. I can't lager, but I can usually cold crash to the 50s. You will have no problem maintaining down to cool Ale temperatures, perhaps even primary temps for lagering, but you won't likely be able to cold condition in it, but you really won't know till you put it to use.