Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

After seeing Jim Fuller's conicals, I took the plunge and purchased a 7 gallon unit from Stout Tanks & Kettles. http://conical-fermenter.com/products/conicals/ Having used this for one beer so far, I thought I'd pass on a few observations in case anyone else is interested in buying a conical.

1. I'm very impressed with the workmanship from Stout. The interior welds are polished smooth and nearly invisible.

2. The included ball valves are very nice and easy to disassemble for cleaning. I really like the full range of control they give you on the dump valve and would not recommend butterfly valves. When you open the bottom valve, you have no idea what's going to come shooting out of there or how fast. It's nice to not lose a gallon of beer because you opened the valve too fast.

3. The ability to drop trub at any point before/during/after the fermentation is very cool. On my first batch, I let the tank settle for 5 or 6 hrs at 62F and then dumped a pint from the cone before aerating and pitching. I couldn't believe how funky and foul the trub cone was.

4. Transferring from the conical to a keg is incredibly simple -- just attach a hose & barb adapter and open the valve. I don't see why a racking arm would be needed for a smaller conical like this. All you have to do is tip the conical forward a little bit to completely drain the beer off the cone.

5. Cleanup is easy. The body and lid clean up about as easily as a bucket fermentor. The valves need to be disassembled and soaked in pbw/oxi, but that can be done in a few seconds with a couple of crescent wrenches.

6. The lid gasket system works very well and is easy to clean (again, soak in some pbw/oxi). You do have to be careful not to open the dump valve while the airlock is installed as it will suck airlock water into the fermentor. I used one of those starter flask foam stoppers and just let it suck fridge air into the top.

At this point, having only done one batch with it, I have no idea if the conical will make a difference to the quality of the finished beer. I plan to run some side-by-side split batches over the next year and will report back when I have more comparative data.

So how does dry hopping work with on of those? just drain out your trub and then add hops in the top as if you were racking?

That is how I do it. On Nov 5, 2012 3:54 PM, "CMLarrison" <brew-equipment@crbeernuts.org (brew-equipment@crbeernuts.org)> wrote:

So how does dry hopping work with on of those? just drain out your trub and then add hops in the top as if you were racking?

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CMLarrison wrote:So how does dry hopping work with on of those? just drain out your trub and then add hops in the top as if you were racking?

I pulled out the airlock and dumped in the pellets. I suppose you could also just remove the lid if you were using leaf hops. The lid is held on by something akin to a set screw and only takes a few moments to remove.

I want one of the 14.5 Gallon conicals really bad. Does yours have a stand or welded on legs? What do you see as advantages/disadvantages to either configuration? I have been relatively good this year. Maybe Santa will bring me one.

Stout conicals (and the cheap eBay one I have) have a stand that the conical sits in. I makes it pretty easy to lift out for cleaning. I can't think of any disadvantages.

Another plus for conicals is being able to easily harvest yeast for your next batch of beer.

sorry for 100 questions, but does everyone keep their conicals in the same location where they brew? What if you have to transfer the beer to the conical in the basement? just haul it down in buckets and then dump it in?

No worries -- ask all the questions you want.

I only have a 7 gallon conical, so I just ran the wort directly into it and then carried it from my garage into the basement. It probably weighed 60 pounds (50 for the wort and 10 for the conical), so not too bad.

For my 7.2 gallon conicals, I fill them in the garage and carry them into the house. If I had larger ones, I get a wheel kit so I could roll it in the house. Going down stairs would be a problem.

CMLarrison wrote:sorry for 100 questions, but does everyone keep their conicals in the same location where they brew? What if you have to transfer the beer to the conical in the basement? just haul it down in buckets and then dump it in?

At my first house I brewed in the garage. I put wheels on my boil kettle burner. When the boil was complete I would push the kettle over to a basement window and drain out of the kettle to the carboys in the basement. I also used a counter flow chiller which was also in the basement. It worked really well. Of course, you need a window you can get your kettle too.