does anyone use a conical fermenter? If so thoughts?

[renagade]

I'm looking at that being my next investment. For one it would be nice to have another vessel for brewing, plus the ability to do a yeast purge and essentially do a second stage ferment without doing a transfer makes total sense.

If you have one, what are you using? do you have the smaller sized unit (up to 3 gallon) or full sized, (5-8 gallon).
What has been your experience on these?

[Beer-lord]

I know gymrat has one but don't know the particulars except that I'm sure it's not a 3 gallon one.
There's starting to be some good options out there and I'd love one but keeping it cool would be a monumental problem for me. And as I get older, I need to keep things simpler.

[Kealia]

I just recently bought a Brew Bucket Mini conical fermenter that is 3.5G.


I haven't used it yet, and it does not allow for yeast dumping.

[Gymrat]

I have a 10 gallon Stainless Steel conical from Stout Kettles. Keeping it cool is no issue. My basement stays 66 to 68F year round. I found that simply putting a high velocity fan on it keeps active fermentations from warming it up. Upsides are being able to drop the yeast out from under it. Which is no easy task because the yeast becomes compacted and does not come out easily. I keep opening and closing the butterfly valve vigorously to sort of chop the yeast up which seems to work. Plus I can actually taste the difference in beer fermented in stainless steel. And hops will never penetrate stainless like they do plastic. On top of that it looks really cool sitting in my mancave.

If you are in the market for one I highly recommend tri clamp fittings rather than threaded. Also go with butterfly valves rather than ball valves. Ball valves have to be disassembled every time you clean the fermenter. Butterfly valves don't. With butterfly valves everything is already in the open when it can be reached with running water. Butterfly valves also have much larger openings making dropping the yeast out less of a struggle.

Downside is cleaning the thing. With a bucket I just take it outside and hose it down. With this there is a matter of disassembling it before hosing it down. Then I have each of the valves and the thermo well, plus gaskets, to clean. When I first got mine it had ball valves and that was a pain in the rear.

There are more options now than there were when I bought mine. If you can find a reasonably priced one other than stout tanks and kettles buy that. I have come across some manufacturing issues with mine. For one the thermowell has grooves in it that need extra attention when cleaning so infections don't hide in them. I don't like some of the welds. So far I have never had an issue though.

[dallen5tak]

I have the big brewdemon conical and love it comes this a drain port on the bottom.