Thought about getting one of these conical fermentors. I herd there were issue with the fragility of the spigot. Not sure if the conical design and potential spigot issues are worth the expense. Anyone use one of these? Also curious about plastic fermentors and brewing fruit beers. Wondering about permeation into the walls and transference of flavour.
Non-HPDE plastic fermentors ... such as the BrewDemon ... are not intended for 'long-term' bulk conditioning. More better would be a Better Bottle. Any food-grade plastic fermentor would be suitable for short-term fruit additions without fear of flavor transference. More BrewDemon users here than here.
Looks to be pretty much just Mr Beer, repackaged with a phony conincal (phony-cal?). It looks like that shape is the basis for a higher price than the product deserves. As a fan of plastic bucket fermenters, I would say you can do better for whatever amount of money you were likely to fork over for this.
The basic BD kit is 62 USD and it ships free. Of course ... there's no such animal as 'free' shipping. Knock $15 off the selling price and the kit cost is 47 USD The MrB fermentor without sculpture sells for 10 USD (37 USD left unaccounted) Small batch ready-made noobrewer recipe sells typically for ~20 USD (17 USD) Temperature strip runs another 5 (12 USD) So yes ... BrewDemon is a tad over-priced but nowhere near the risk of getting fully serviced into a 5G set-up by a LHBS.
I could not recommend that someone pay $60 to get into homebrewing with this gear. I think there are better options. Yes, you may spend a bit more up front, but you are likely to get more for your money in the long run.
Unless it turns out homeboy brewing t'ain't for you and there there's no long run. Then you're stuck with two or three hundred bucks worth of buckets ... a burner ... bottles ... a kettle ... and caps. The old 5G model is no longer the most practical or appealing approach for the newly brew-curious ... evidenced by the rise in the 1G market in recent years.
I guess it seems wise to just purchase the things you need piece by piece with the idea of spending a little more now so that you don't have to spend more later if one decides to brew larger batches or multiple. I plan on trying out a number of 1-2.5 gallon batches to discover what I like before attempting larger batches.
