Ferment, condition and pressurise in one vessel

[malt junkie]

OT

It may well be the way of the future for home brewers kegging, especially if they come in at a close price point, obviously cleaning the buggers might be an issue, but with the right pump CIP the way commercials do now. I think it's going to be watch the space PET is fairly durable, so multiple uses of the kegs is a given but what that life span is will play a part in the HB community jumping on board.


I wait to hear more on the fermenters they might well replace my plastics.

 

[Feldon]

Cleaning shouldn't be any more of an issue than cleaning a PET bottle. Just don't scrub it with anything even mildly abrasive and it should last for years. Overnight sodium percarbonate soak should do the trick no worries.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I'm still very happy with my 50lt kegmenter from keg king. In a temp controlled fridge does everything you need or want it to.
Finish the beer naturally carbonated. Chill it. You could drink it off the yeast cake in the same vessel but I think its much better pressure transferring into 18lt serving kegs. Get it off the yeast cake. With a bit of DIY nous you can do everything these kits do for the price in hundreds, not thousands of $$$.
I like no exposure at all. I harvest yeast directly into PET bottles using carb caps. I simple direct transfer sterile water into the emptied kegmenter, swirl it around to wash it then transfer back into pet bottles. Its bloody awesome.
My little thread amongst others: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/89407-kegmenter-are-they-good-to-use/page-2

 

[malt junkie]

Cleaning shouldn't be any more of an issue than cleaning a PET bottle. Just don't scrub it with anything even mildly abrasive and it should last for years. Overnight sodium percarbonate soak should do the trick no worries.

I was talking their kegs which are A or D couple, no real easy access, and pet bottles don't have springs and vavles, and tubes.

 

[peteru]

Pressure fermenting in the 35L PET conical and then transferring to a 30L PET keg sounds like the way to go. There might even be scope for 20-25L kegs for home brewing.

I'm pretty sure they would be able to adapt the fermenter top lid with ball lock posts and pressure relief valve to use with the PET kegs. Then they would have home brewers attention. Especially if they could supply the PET kegs at half the price of the 19L stainless kegs we all use now.

 

[Tahoose]

Did you anneal the edges of the top hole before beating it upwards?
I'm very tempted to give this a go

Sorry spork I don't know what you mean by this so I'm going say no.

Works well, pressurised stainless fermenter for under $100.

Rated to 40psi before the prv kicks in.

 

[sp0rk]

Sorry spork I don't know what you mean by this so I'm going say no.

Works well, pressurised stainless fermenter for under $100.

Rated to 40psi before the prv kicks in.

Annealing is when you heat a metal up and alter its physical properties, in this instance to make it easier to bend
I will give this a go when I can source a new keg

 

[Tahoose]

Where abouts are you located??

 

[sp0rk]

West of Newcastle, NSW

 

[Tahoose]

Ahh ok, hunter valley?? Spent a bit of time in singleton - great town that.

Shame your not down here have plenty of kegs up for offer.

 

[Meddo]

FYI according to Oxebar the fermentasaurus "should be in stores early in the new year" and dimensions are about 900mm high by 370mm OD.

 

[peteru]

Bummer about the height. About 200mm too tall for my ferment fridge :-(

 

[keedoery]

"made by"
Pretty sure Keg King source almost all of their stuff from random Alibaba sellers

Hello Sp0rk - Mayor of Pooptown,

I rarely hop on this forum but i see we were mentioned in this posts and there seems to be some misinformation here.

There is not a single thing that we purchase from Alibaba. You are right in saying that a large portion of our gear comes from China if that is what you are implying. A couple years ago we setup a Shanghai consolidation center and this is where the majority of our gear comes from. This was primarily because we have increasing demand for our products overseas and it's more efficient for us to ship from Shanghai than from Melbourne. There are plenty of home brew distributors overseas who have issues purchasing of Alibaba as the quality is variable to say the least. I wish we could get great quality gear from Alibaba but it's simply not that easy. Our Shanghai consolidation center is run by our Hong Kong registered company called AMCO Technology and the details for the company are here:
http://www.kegking.cn/

We have a number of our own staff in China who manage the consolidation center and coo-ordinate the various suppliers. Some of our products are quite complicated and will require several suppliers. For instance our Series 4 Fridges require coordination from a multitude of suppliers:
1. The fridge is manufactured by a fridge supplier who makes the fridge body
2. The Fonts are made by stainless pipe manufacturer then they are finished at our consolidation center.
3. The Intertap beer taps involve 3 different suppliers. There is a company that does the stainless casting and two other suppliers who look after all the seals and then we do the stainless machining then the assembly is done at our Shanghai facility.
4. The beer line is extruded by a company that specializes in extruding tubing and we do about 5-10km in a run
5. The injection molded drip tray comes from one of my business partners friends who does a number of injection molded parts from us.

Trust me. If it was as simple as just going to Alibaba and ordering a fridge we would do this but the reality is generic stuff sourced from Alibaba often turns out to be junk. I can tell you that from personal experience as we tried to order from Alibaba ourselves and it simply doesn't work.

Over the past 10 years of being in this industry we have found that the only way that we can control quality and make awesome products is by having staff on the ground in China, owning our own tooling, injection molds, stainless casts, jigs, machinery and doing the majority of the assembly and consolidation ourselves. This philosophy is the reason why we send containers of stock directly from our Shanghai DC to various distributors in New Zealand, UK, America, Canada, Philippines, South America and other countries. The vast majority of distributors that we now sell to are customers who started off by trying to source on Alibaba and have switched over to us because we now have a very well established consolidation center and we provide better quality gear than generic stuff sourced from Alibaba.

Over the past 5 years in particular we have spent over 4 million in design and product development and we have heaps of cool stuff that is about to be released. The Fermentasaurus product is just about to hit the market and this production line to make these has been over 1.5mil alone to setup this business and none of it was from Alibaba. I think i can honestly say that we have spent more money on new product design and development than any other Home Brew Hardware wholesaler in Australia which is why there are a lot of new products that we have made and heaps more that are in the pipeline.

 

[vittorio]

Uni tanks are good if used properly

 

[keedoery]

With regards to the Fermentasaurus this is an exciting new product that as pointed out by some of the other forum members it's a product that is made in Springvale at our new blow molding and R&D facility.

We have been using these fermenters our self for a while now and we have been doing a lot of testing.

Being a pressure vessel the safety requirements are significantly more than your typical plastic fermenter.

We seem to be going a different directly to a lot of other manufacturers at the moment. If you look at SS Brewtech, iMake, Blickmann Eng. These guys all seem to be working on liquid cooled conical fermenters but in our opinion it's not the way to go. Glycol chillers can be a bit complicated and they do not heat and cool the fermenter as well as a fermenting fridge. They also draw a lot of power and its expensive to get sufficient insulation to be able to crash chill so you have limitations on how cold you can make the fermenter.

With these new fermenters we have decided that we will design a dedicated fermenting fridge to house these new fermenters.

There was not a standard fridge size that we were able to get "off the shelf" so we have designed our own fridge model which will have inbuilt heating and cooling. This new fridge design will not be available until late 2017

The fermenters themselves will start to flow out to the retail outlets in Feb next year.

The RRP on the fermenters will be about $129 for the basic kit and that will include everything in this image:

We will also sell a "pressure kit" for the fermenter that will include all the things in this image and this will be about AUD$40 or something:

We are still making some minor modifications to the floating dip tube and also the butterfly dump valve which is the main reason why we have not released the Fermentasaurus already but we are extremely close to having everything finished.

 

[mtb]

With the collective buying power of AHB it sounds like a kegasaurus bulk buy is possible. I'd pick up at least one of these but likely more if there were plenty of lead time to save some pennies.

 

[Bridges]

Hey KegKing thanks for chipping in with all that. Seriously it's great to hear from the horses mouth so to speak. Looking forward to hearing more from you!

 

[malt junkie]

With regards to the Fermentasaurus this is an exciting new product that as pointed out by some of the other forum members it's a product that is made in Springvale at our new blow molding and R&D facility.

We have been using these fermenters our self for a while now and we have been doing a lot of testing.

Being a pressure vessel the safety requirements are significantly more than your typical plastic fermenter.

We seem to be going a different directly to a lot of other manufacturers at the moment. If you look at SS Brewtech, iMake, Blickmann Eng. These guys all seem to be working on liquid cooled conical fermenters but in our opinion it's not the way to go. Glycol chillers can be a bit complicated and they do not heat and cool the fermenter as well as a fermenting fridge. They also draw a lot of power and its expensive to get sufficient insulation to be able to crash chill so you have limitations on how cold you can make the fermenter.

With these new fermenters we have decided that we will design a dedicated fermenting fridge to house these new fermenters.

There was not a standard fridge size that we were able to get "off the shelf" so we have designed our own fridge model which will have inbuilt heating and cooling. This new fridge design will not be available until late 2017

The fermenters themselves will start to flow out to the retail outlets in Feb next year.

The RRP on the fermenters will be about $129 for the basic kit and that will include everything in this image:

We will also sell a "pressure kit" for the fermenter that will include all the things in this image and this will be about AUD$40 or something:

We are still making some minor modifications to the floating dip tube and also the butterfly dump valve which is the main reason why we have not released the Fermentasaurus already but we are extremely close to having everything finished.

Have Keg King considered a thermowell for these? Or for the kegmenter?

 

[TwoCrows]

And possibly a pressure spray ball cleaning attachment that runs of mains pressure.

 

[sp0rk]

Hello Sp0rk - Mayor of Pooptown,

Thanks for the response guys, and for setting things straight
I guess it's the other way around, random alibaba sellers are knicking your designs/products and selling them
Good to see you're improving on the quality of a lot of your gear too