Wortgames
'Draught' is not a beer style - it's a lifestyle
Hi everyone, I've been lubricating a mate of mine for a long time about making some stainless steel conical fermenters. Well the planets are finally aligning and the project is go. Basically, we have access to an extremely well-equipped thin stainless fabrication facility, all food/medical grade, cone formers, invisible welding, the lot.
So I'm going to knock out a couple of prototypes over the next couple of weeks, and I thought I'd seek your input and 'wish lists'. Here follows my basic description, for refinement or alteration by consensus:
Construction:
I'm picturing a double-batch (50-60L) vessel that will fit in an average upright fridge. Alternatively, a tallish single batch (30L) fermenter that could fit 2 to a fridge. It will be made from thin (1.2 or 1.6mm) 304 stainless and polished inside and out.
Fittings:
It will obviously have a drain at the bottom and another above about the 3L slurry mark (or about 2L for the single batch fermenter). It might be better to supply it with spigots but without taps etc, as some would prefer cheaper and others would want the whole dismantleable stainless deal. It will probably have 3 legs that hold it high enough to get a decent container under the bottom drain. It will probably have a pair of handles or a full perimeter rail for carrying.
Lid:
To keep costs down, I was thinking that people might prefer to sort out their own lid arrangement, unless we can come up with something simple - otherwise the lid could end up costing more to produce than the conical. I would like to try to make it fit a readily available tight-fitting plastic lid for starters. Any thoughts?
Other options:
Because this will be largely a batch process, we don't want to get into too much customising at this stage, although we could easily offer a few basic options if they were popular enough. These might include:
- a stainless heating/cooling coil welded to the outside
- thermometer spigot
- adjustable leg height
- anything else?
So some questions for general consensus would be:
What capacity would you want? Would you prefer to have one large one or two small ones?
Would you be keeping it in a fridge or free-standing it somewhere? Would you want wheels?
How high off the floor would you want the tip of the cone to be?
Would you prefer to buy the basic blank and add your own fittings, or buy it complete?
Obviously the cost is yet TBA but we are hoping to make them significantly cheaper than anything currently available. I should be able to get fairly good freight rates so interstate purchasers shouldn't be left out.
So I'm going to knock out a couple of prototypes over the next couple of weeks, and I thought I'd seek your input and 'wish lists'. Here follows my basic description, for refinement or alteration by consensus:
Construction:
I'm picturing a double-batch (50-60L) vessel that will fit in an average upright fridge. Alternatively, a tallish single batch (30L) fermenter that could fit 2 to a fridge. It will be made from thin (1.2 or 1.6mm) 304 stainless and polished inside and out.
Fittings:
It will obviously have a drain at the bottom and another above about the 3L slurry mark (or about 2L for the single batch fermenter). It might be better to supply it with spigots but without taps etc, as some would prefer cheaper and others would want the whole dismantleable stainless deal. It will probably have 3 legs that hold it high enough to get a decent container under the bottom drain. It will probably have a pair of handles or a full perimeter rail for carrying.
Lid:
To keep costs down, I was thinking that people might prefer to sort out their own lid arrangement, unless we can come up with something simple - otherwise the lid could end up costing more to produce than the conical. I would like to try to make it fit a readily available tight-fitting plastic lid for starters. Any thoughts?
Other options:
Because this will be largely a batch process, we don't want to get into too much customising at this stage, although we could easily offer a few basic options if they were popular enough. These might include:
- a stainless heating/cooling coil welded to the outside
- thermometer spigot
- adjustable leg height
- anything else?
So some questions for general consensus would be:
What capacity would you want? Would you prefer to have one large one or two small ones?
Would you be keeping it in a fridge or free-standing it somewhere? Would you want wheels?
How high off the floor would you want the tip of the cone to be?
Would you prefer to buy the basic blank and add your own fittings, or buy it complete?
Obviously the cost is yet TBA but we are hoping to make them significantly cheaper than anything currently available. I should be able to get fairly good freight rates so interstate purchasers shouldn't be left out.
