The Catalyst - Beer Fermentation Made Easy

Temperature control. 'nuff said.

 

Looks nice! Very simple and a lot less equipment to sanitize!

 

I'm curious to see what more experienced hime Brewers say about this. It seems to be marketed to beginners.

It looks like it could solve a few slightly irritating parts of the process.

 

It does have the yeast capturing apparatus, which is nice.

 

The way it captures the yeast is much more similar to how a brewery would do it with a giant fermentation tank. It's like a 100BBL fermentation tank scaled down to 6.5 gallons and not stainless steel. Siphoning is a pain in the ass this would be much more effective and easier IMO

 

Temperature control would be a bitch.
Siphoning is not that hard with an auto-siphon
If you worry about oxygen when you siphon, use a bucket with a valve (like a bottling bucket)
Yeast collection might be a plus, but using a bit of the cake has worked for me in the past.

Long story short, I don't see the point. There are a lot of brewing things that would help make better beer vs. this.
pH Meter
Oxygen setup
Temp control
RO machine
probably lots more that I am not thinking of

 

Sooo... what's the difference between that and this (other than an extra Benjamin)?

https://www.morebeer.com/products/f...rmenter.html?gclid=CLqEis_xh84CFRCVaAod6EQOaQ

 

1) Valve is 3" on the kickstarter vs 1" on the fastferment and the bigger one takes any mason jar..
2) That fastferment looks like a real pain to clean.
3) Read the reviews about quality problems.

Having said that, I'm not about to get either one.

 

Each time you add a jar on the bottom and open the valve, you'll send air bubbling up through your wort. Same with the bottling thing.

 

This is what always bothers me about pseudo-conicals. If you can't pressurize it, you can't keep O2 out.

 

I saw the kickstarter video for this today. As someone who is curious about homebrewing but limited by space (& ability) I find it an appealing sales pitch... so I'm glad to read the comments here. Still at least one major move away from tinkering with any sort of homebrew setup, so I have time to wait--for anyone who takes the plunge on this please report back!

 

Since I have a fast fermenter, I thought about pushing some Co2 into the collection ball before reattaching to limit O2 exposure to the beer. Is this significantly better? I just purchased 2 stainless steel racking canes and was going to try and rig something up to do a closed transfer in the fast fermenter.

 

I can't say if it would be significantly better, but less O2 would be better.

 

I think it looks like a great product for novice and intermediates. I wish something like this was available when I started. Advanced homebrewers won't see any need for it. On the negative side, the price of course, and I'm skeptical as to how long a plastic valve will last. Temperature control wouldn't be too huge an issue for me, but would be for some brewers in warmer climes especially if they don't have a big ferm fridge. Here in 'Sconsin, it would be fine for most beers.

 

Good point, it'd be nice if there was spigot above the the 3" butterfly valve. Then you could fill your sanitized mason jar with wort and carefully screw it into the 3" valve. That way it would greatly limit the amount of O2 going into the wort once you open the valve.

I guess you could use a racking cake and siphon some into the jar from the top but that's just more exposure to O2 and potential infection.