Conicals - Worth The Cost?

My main interest in possibly getting a conical in the future is my fascination with bold hoppy beers. Of course a conical is not mandatory to produce one, but I'm really love to be able to ferment, dump trub, dry hop, drop the hops, double dry hop, drop the hops again, and then co2 push the beer into keg. I'm very curious to see what type of results a completely sealed system would produce when brewing overly hoppy beers since it has practically no possibility of oxidation. Perhaps it would be marginal at best and totally not worth it. Or perhaps it is yet another major key to getting hoppy beers even hoppier. I just don't know and am very curious about it.

 

He means to put a positive pressure on the top with CO2, that way you don't introduce O2. The keg can be purged before you do this, so that there is no O2 there. You can also run some beer in the transfer line to displace the O2.

 

One of the great benefits of a conical is that it is pressurize able. You can push your beer via CO2 (reducing O2 intake) by moving your beer from your conical to your kegging system, so that your beer will never be exposed to O2 after its initial burst of oxygenation before you pitch yeast.

By allowing the beer to drain from the conical instead of pushing it via CO2 you will introduce some O2 (how much would need to be left to the more scientific among us).

We are all striving to make better beer, and reducing O2 goes a long way (especially in our hop forward beers).

Cheers!

 

This might help Trey...at the very least it depicts one way of rigging it!

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/conical-keg-illustrated-75794/

 

Blichmanns are rated at 3 PSI. The weight on the corny lid is a mechanical pop off that keeps you from over pressure > 3 PSI.

 

Don't bend over the little weight that sits on the corny lid.

That weight will let the pressure off if you go too high.

 

In the homebrewtalk link above, look at the picture with the stopper installed in the conical lid, behind is the corny lid, and the round thing that you do not see on a normal corny lid is the weight that is the safety pop off.

 

WASTE of money. First of all, what good is one 7 gallon fermentor? Maybe it's okay if you are only going to have one beer fermenting at a time. Still, you're buying yourself one pain-in-the-ass fermentation everytime you decide to use it. Harder to clean. Harder to control temperature - just so you can (maybe) harvest yeast during that fermentation. What other advantages?

And if you do buy more than one, how are you planning to controll the fermentation temperatures? The guy at Peg's Cantina has used several 1Bbl Blichmans for years. He keeps each in its own commercial refrigerator http://www.pegscantina.com/brewhouse.html (I only mention them because he has the #13 ranked beer and I was there Wednesday night). But that's the problem with these things. They are NOT like commercial fermentors because they are not jacketed for glycol. The MoreBeer fermentors with the temperature controls are another thing alltogether, but they're quite expensive.

 

My carboys are not jacketed for glycol, either While I can put my carboys in a fermentation cooler of some sort I use ambient temp for perhaps 90% of my beers. I take advantage of the changing seasons to brew different styles. There's no disadvantage to a conical in that case. Not sure what you mean by "one pain-in-the-ass fermentation everytime you decide to use it". What's the hard part? As to cleaning -- it's lighter than a glass carboy, and I find a sponge much easier to use than a carboy brush (not that a carboy brush is particularly difficult) and I'm more confident that I got everything when I can do it by hand. I'm also not paranoid about smacking it against the granite countertop when cleaning it. While I think a 7 gal unit may not give the same bang for the buck as my 14 gal, I still think it's a nice upgrade from carboys.

That said, there are other brew house upgrades that are, perhaps, more cost effective.

 

True, but you can fit several carboys in an ice chest (I can fit 6) and control individual temperatures with heat. It's a little different with a conical on legs, and it's going to be troublesome to harvest yeast while in such a freezer. It would have to be an upright. If you build a walk-in, and have a few conicals, I think it could be great. You still have an efficiency issue with individual temperature control.


I say "pain in the ass" because you have to adjust your process to accomodate that one batch. Of course, one man's "pain in the ass" is another man's "fun with gadgets". Obviously it's harder to clean because you have parts and fittings and all - not a big deal, but something else to mention.

 

I believe you just gave me a new route to try for my next IIPA...many thanks.