KK - 'Fermentasaurus' conical PET fermenter

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wide eyed and legless said:
As you can see they are a fairly tight fit, gently stretch the washer until it fits over easily, a piece of wire bent at no more than 90 degrees, slip the washer over the thread and push on using the tool for the nut pull out the wire and position the nut. I bought 2 more units, at first regretted putting a stout into the fermentasaurus but transferred to secondary and cleaned up easily. Really impressed how easily these units clean up.
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Nice set up, temp controlled room or shed with the split system?
 
KegLand-com-au said:
I don't quite understand the point of this vessel. It's basically got a conical bottom but no valve so you cant dump anything out of the cone. That's the main benefit of a cone in the first place.

Then the handles on the stand are upside down so it's not possible to lift easily or ergonomically.

As this container has no benefit of being a conical vessel why not just ferment in a 19L ball lock keg that's even more compact. You can ferment in a second hand keg or a brand new keg if you want to spend a bit more money.

Why does this product exist? Who designed this product and who thought this was a good idea?
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Then you guys have obviously missed one of the biggest selling points of a conical in terms of beer quality
It minimises contact between trub/spent yeast and your beer. by the trub being compacted down into the cone, you will have a smaller surface contact area.
Rubbishing a competitor's product without taking into fact one of the main selling points of your similar unit makes is seem like you're just being bitter...
 
sp0rk said:
Then you guys have obviously missed one of the biggest selling points of a conical in terms of beer quality
It minimises contact between trub/spent yeast and your beer. by the trub being compacted down into the cone, you will have a smaller surface contact area.
Rubbishing a competitor's product without taking into fact one of the main selling points of your similar unit makes is seem like you're just being bitter...
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Exactly right and that is why this works well and is very cheap for what you can do with it.
 
sp0rk said:
Then you guys have obviously missed one of the biggest selling points of a conical in terms of beer quality
It minimises contact between trub/spent yeast and your beer. by the trub being compacted down into the cone, you will have a smaller surface contact area.
Rubbishing a competitor's product without taking into fact one of the main selling points of your similar unit makes is seem like you're just being bitter...
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I'd disagree with you there. It's a homebrewing scale - contact with trub and yeast is rarely ever an issue. All of this "you need to get the beer off of the yeast as soon as it's hit FG" is relevant to commercial/large volume brewing, where hydrostatic pressure has significant consequences for yeast health and possible autolysis post fermentation. But is there any such concern at the homebrewing scale? That hydrostatic pressure certainly doesn't exist at such a small scale, so why else should we be concerned?

At a homebrewing scale, I would think that the selling point of the conical would be yeast harvesting from the cone, and being able to dump the trub so that there is less chance of racking it over to bottles/kegs. You can't really do either of those as easily if there's no way of dumping the cone
 
I like this method, I have a two door fridge so I can transfer easily from one Fermener to the other leaving the yeast behind, from there it can either go down the drain or harvested much the same way most breweries transfer to the bright tank.
 
goatchop41 said:
I'd disagree with you there. It's a homebrewing scale - contact with trub and yeast is rarely ever an issue. All of this "you need to get the beer off of the yeast as soon as it's hit FG" is relevant to commercial/large volume brewing, where hydrostatic pressure has significant consequences for yeast health and possible autolysis post fermentation. But is there any such concern at the homebrewing scale? That hydrostatic pressure certainly doesn't exist at such a small scale, so why else should we be concerned?

At a homebrewing scale, I would think that the selling point of the conical would be yeast harvesting from the cone, and being able to dump the trub so that there is less chance of racking it over to bottles/kegs. You can't really do either of those as easily if there's no way of dumping the cone
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Can you elaborate and quantify on the hydrostatic pressure you talk about. I mean some real figures??
 
York said:
Can you elaborate and quantify on the hydrostatic pressure you talk about. I mean some real figures??
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I can't give you exact numbers, no, but it's just general physics, isn't it? A tall fermenter with a large volume will exert much more hydrostatic pressure than a much, much smaller volume
 
goatchop41 said:
I can't give you exact numbers, no, but it's just general physics, isn't it? A tall fermenter with a large volume will exert much more hydrostatic pressure than a much, much smaller volume
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Well the pressure will vary with depth of course but I think I will do some research on this. Because yeast is a very minute organism whose cellular membranes will be semi permeable it may not suffer any ill effects at all. Just like jelly fish are found at great depths in the sea. Tomorrow I will study this a bit more. In the meantime let the results speak for themselves as people start making beer with these things.
 
Chris White goes into pressure fermenting in this podcast,

He talks about what the yeast go through when they are under pressure.
 
York said:
In the meantime let the results speak for themselves as people start making beer with these things.
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No one is saying that they won't make good beer with them.
The discussion regarding hydrostatic pressure, etc. was in response to spork claiming that having having less beer in contact with trub/yeast was good for it, which just doesn't really stand up in the homebrewing world.
 
Fro-Daddy said:
@FarsideOfCrazy I've brought that up before but was told that hydrostatic pressure and top pressure shouldn't be compared.
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Can you recall why? I would have thought x bar of pressure would be x bar, regardless of how it's generated and would affect the yeast the same way, but I'm willing to learn if I'm wrong.
 
goatchop41 said:
No one is saying that they won't make good beer with them.
The discussion regarding hydrostatic pressure, etc. was in response to spork claiming that having having less beer in contact with trub/yeast was good for it, which just doesn't really stand up in the homebrewing world.
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I'd like to see proof to this claim, not hearsay
 
The hydro static pressure in the large commercial conical's does not really come into play until fermentation is complete. There are 3 things to consider, the exothermic movement of the yeast which creates movement, co2 bubbles rising and creating movement and also the temperature differences in the fermenter causing thermal currents. With the fermentasaurus you can see this happening, the snub nose has another advantage in that because you are removing the beer from above the yeast, and not the other way around means you are not losing any beer left in the cone if the yeast had been dumped.
 

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