Conicals - Worth The Cost?

I have been thinking of a concial as well (not now since I am in an apartment, but in the future). My main concern is related to keeping the fermenting wort at the proper temperature, it seems as if it could be costly to keep that temp in the correct range unless you have a great ambient temp for brewing as it is... I am sure there is some relatively inexpensive way to fix it but I have not done a ton of research on that yet.

 

My main concern has more to do with the size and shape of the vessel rather than the material.

Edit: Not sure how you control temp as of now but I dont think a concial with stand would fit in a normal keezer and I know it wouldnt fit in my son of a fermentation chamber.

 

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, if your ambient temp is good then its not a big concern. Looks like your basement is a pretty damn good fermenting space! I assume the steel would be no different if it even is different at all from the glass in this case.

 

I've been using a 6.5 gal conical for 5 or 6 years. For me and my procedures/setup, it gives me no added benefit. A 6.5 gallon plastic bucket with a spigot 2-4 inches from the bottom would be just as good. I got it in a lucrative trade.

Save your money and get temp controlled chamber and/or yeast starter equipment.

 

The Blichmann website has some good info on temp control with conicals: http://www.blichmannengineering.com/fermentor/fermentor.html#cooling

 

It's a nice piece of bling, but the main reasons commercial breweries use conicals are not as compelling on the homebrew scale.

- Ability to pull trub/yeast off bottom and get the beer off the yeast - doesn't matter on a homebrew scale as autolysis is a non-issue
- Ability to harvest yeast from the bottom easily - pretty easy to do with a ladle when you're dealing with a 6 gallon bucket rather than an enormous stainless steel container. You can also top crop or harvest from a sanitary blowoff.
- Temp control with jacketed fermenters - not a big deal when your fermenter will fit in a chest freezer or fridge.

 

There is always something!

 

I bought a 14.5 gal SS conical a few years ago for ten gallon batches. I'm thinking the benefits may not be as great with something that limits me to five gallons. The only downside, IMO, is temp control. It's certainly doable, but it doesn't lend itself to the traditional, off the shelf spare parts solutions. I simply do lagers in the garage in the cool weather like I did with carboys. I'm now pondering more elegant solutions.
BTW, one benefit that hasn't been mentioned is that it looks really, really cool behind my bar.

 

Ha! Touché. Benefit shemenifit. I'm not giving mine away either.

 

For me, it's not worth it due to limited benefits, temp control issues (no space for a full fridge or desire to rig a cooling jacket or submersible coil with recirculating coolant), and the simple fact that the money would be better spent on other parts of my operation (welding equipment for a stand, steel, a rims setup, etc) that would have a greater positive impact on my process (main goal right now is a more simplified/shorter brew day with a higher degree of repeatability).

 

Not to belabor the point, but if you step up to ten gal batches, you effectively cut your brew time in half. That's one of the more notable advantages if my conical. Of course, you could also do this with two carboys. U should also note that I still do five gal batches of some if my heavier beers (ten gallons is a lot of Barleywine!)

 

Yeah, I tend not to do 10 gallon batches unless I'm brewing a pale ale for a wedding or something. With shaving my brewday time down, my particular setup requires me to drag out and put away a ton of stuff (stands for burners, burners, mlt stand, pump stand, CFC, etc), so the logistics of it would be streamlined a great deal by investing in a stand as opposed to a conical. Not trying to hate on conical ownership, but it simply wouldn't be the best money spent in terms of my goals at this point.

 

That's interesting, given that 100K BTU is equivalent to 29kW of electricity -- probably 10x the rating of your residential electric burners. The key difference is the transfer of heat to the kettle. With a gas burner, much (most?) of the heat escapes in all directions. I suspect a very small percentage of the energy is actually transferred to the kettle. Not so with electric. That's why you need a pot holder to remove a small sauce pan from a gas burner, but typically not from an electric burner.