This product has already been finished and it's been released and we have already put some stock in our retail store and also sending a pallet of the fermenters to Grain and Grape soon. We have not really promoted them yet as we don't have enough stock. We already have pending orders to several retailers in Europe, America and Canada which we have not been able to clear yet.
We have been a bit busy with a lot of new gear that we are trying to finish on the horizon so haven't even had a chance to take new photos and upload to the website. Hopefully we can do that this week.
We will do a video soon and also upload to YouTube when we get around to it. There seems to be a few questions that need answering in the meantime:
1 - UV and skunking
We can easily tint to the plastic to block UV if that is what the market calls for. As we manufacture our own preforms onsite we can easily add tint to the preforms in one very simple step. We can make the plastic jet black if that's what customers want or we can use some really cool liquid metal additives such as ones like this which block close to 100% UV:
http://www.ampacet.com/seven-new-liquidmetal-colors-for-highly-reflective-pet-packaging/
The only issue is that this would also mean you can't see inside the fermenter which is one of the great benefits of these fermenters over stainless steel. I recommend that you get around this by simply putting the fermenter in a fridge which is what i would recommend to anyone who is serious about temperature control. I personally have been using the Fermentasaurus for some time and really love the fact that i can see at what stage the brewing process is up to. I have not had any light struck issues but i use a dark fridge to ferment in so it's not an issue for me.
2. UV Stability of the long chain PET
The PET that we use is very stable under UV and when treated correctly it will last customers a very long time. With that said, as mentioned in answer "1" i would always recommend fermenting in a dark fridge. The body of the fermenter is however eventually going to wear out and this can be replaced for AUD$39.95 so it's not expensive to replace if it's damaged for whatever reason. I think they will last most home brewers several years before needing to be replaced.
3. O2 Ingress
The blend of PET that we use is significantly better than most plastic fermenters. It is significantly less that Polypropylene(PP) and Polyethylene(PE) which is what the majority of plastic fermenters are currently made from. PE (both LDPE and HDPE) are particularly bad and are orders of magnitude worse than PET with regards to gas permeability. There are some factors that improve our gas barrier properties when compared to other PET containers and a couple of these factors include:
a) We use high stretch ratio from preform to blow cavity on the molding. A high stretch ratio means we have high degree of molecular alignment. This helps with the burst pressures but it also improves gas barrier properties.
b) We use long molecular chain PET which is significantly more expensive as a raw material but it simply gives us better results with regards to burst pressures and gas permeability.
So basically what this comes down to is that gas permeability is really not an issue. If for some reason there is a demand for even better gas transmission rates (which i dont think there is any need for) then one very easy alteration is to coat the outside of the fermenter with an epoxy solution. There are several on the market that were heavily researched by Amcor and PPG in America but none of them ended up going into broad scale production as they were not seen to be necessary as there were better mono-layer solutions which have already proven to be suitable for beer storage in PET and have been adopted widely.
4. Cleaning and opening size
The opening is 80mm diameter. I can get my hand fairly easily into the top of the fermenter but it's really not necessary to and i would discourage you doing this. Manually scrubbing the fermenter will increase the chance of scratches. The internal wall of the PET container is very smooth and stuff just doesnt stick to it like other plastic fermenters. You will get a great clean just with sodium percarbonate and a short soak and rinse with phosphoric acid type of sanitiser. If however you just want to put your hand in the fermenter for some reason and you have fat hands they may not fit in but it's a good excuse to get your wife to clean your fermenter. It's extremly difficult to make a fermenter with an large opening which can handle high pressures. For instance even with the 80mm diameter opening it means that the lid is 50cm^2. As we felt that the fermenters should have a safe burst pressure of above 7 bar in order to have a safe working pressure at 2.5 bar that is a considerable force on the lid. 1 bar is 1kg per square cm so with a 50cm squared lid that is 50*7bar = 350 kg force on the lid. So it's a huge amount of force on the lid. For this same reason it's rare to see home brewing conical fermenters holding pressures high enough to carbonate. In my opinion the fact that this fermenter can safely handle a working pressure of 2.5bar is easily worth the constraint of the 80mm opening.
Overall we have worked really hard on getting this product to market. I hope you guys enjoy using it. I genuinely believe it will change the home brewing industry forever and bring a new level of convenience and quality to home brew.
If you have any other questions just call or email us. We don't check AHB very often so if you lodge a question here it may not get answered for some time.
