OnederBrew.....anyone try this?

5 Gal DIY conical....

http://www.onederbrew.com/doc/onederbrewDYIcatalogpage.pdf

It is interesting. Not very sexy (no stainless steel).

Do you think there would be any off flavors or smells from the plastic buckets?

Chris

It looks like it could be a real PITA to clean/use....

whats the point of having a 5 gallon conical??? Kind of pointless other than to claim you have a conical

They sell everything you need to blow bucket parts through the wall and soak your ceiling with beer, then disclaim it with this: "We do not recommend pressurizing and do not guarantee your bucket."

The name reminds me of the movie, "That Thing You Do." "What's the name of your band? The Oh-Need-Uhrs?"

Looks like an outstanding product...

I saw that disclaimer....pretty funny! I wonder how big the conical section is...is it even big enough to ferment 5 gallons in?

I thought I saw one of the vids say that it would fit 6.5 gallon buckets too. It seems like a cool idea to vent off the CO2 for the first part of the fermentation and then close it off to slowly carbonate it to whatever you want.

They were demonstrating these at NHC in Seattle/Bellevue. Seeing that bucket inflated like a balloon and bulging out at the seams while under pressure did not fill me with confidence. Now, I have no direct experience with the product, perhaps it works a treat. However, it just looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

I say this in the current issue of byo. I was also wondering about this thing. The first thing that I thought was why did the use black buckets instead of white. I would be scared of the color leaching into the beer.

I saw them at NHC and thought they were a joke. I haven't tried them out and I know it's not the best thing to form an opinion before trying it. The buckets are not rated for pressure, period and I think it's a horrible idea.

Yuri_Rage said:

The name reminds me of the movie, "That Thing You Do." "What's the name of your band? The Oh-Need-Uhrs?"

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Exactly what I was thinking.

I looked into their beta test program. I couldn't believe they wanted me to pay like $100 for the privledge of doing their testing for them. I told them "You've got to be kidding!".

I'd avoid these things until there's some solid feedback from some of their suckers, um, I mean beta testers...

Regardless of whether or not it works, it's made of plastic and fricking expensive. No thanks.

Edit: The maker is a member here if you have questions https://www.homebrewtalk.com/members/onederbrew

Couple problems I see. Like buckets, it's plastic and can get scratched and has higher O2 permeability than other fermenters. You also have a gasket between the cone and cylinder (bucket) which depending on how well you clean and sanitize, could be an issue. So really the only benefit is it's easier to dump trub and harvest yeast.

yeah I may have had a bit too much to drink at the NHC... bought one. When it arrived I was scared by how terrible it looks inside and by the pact all the fittings are using picnic taps... I posted a video up on youtube with some close ups of the 'scary' areas. I have had this for about 3 months but have not been brave enough to use it yet.

It's not the pressure that scares me too much (there is a rubber bung in the bottom that should fail before the bucket does) It's the rough edges and seams on the inside in the plastic that worry me the most... also still wondering how I am suppose to get the beer from this to my keg... beer line doesn't stay on a picnic tap that well....

you don't move it to your keg. You serve from it. It is a fermentor 1st and then Keg 2nd.

in that case it's even worse. you can't pressurize it except via fermentation...so once you're out of built up pressure the beer is going to start to go flat... I think this would be an awesome product if they made just the code... in stainless steel and with usuable fittings.

It would be an awesome product if it were 100% stainless. Oh wait, that's just a regular conical and they (not onederbrew) do make them.

heh yeah I have one....but still. The plastic isn't what I take issue with the most...the rough edges in the plastic are... It's like buying a new plastic bucket fermenter...that's comes pre scratched up...

I always like to give someone with entrepreneurial spirit some leeway, but after seeing inside closeups of that plastic fermenter, I have to wonder if the inventor has really ever brewed beer. I have no problem with it being plastic. That's one way to make it less expensive for the "average" homebrewer who is not so fanatical about his equipment. But, I would at least expect the first real production units to be better than that as far as quality control. You normally don't see things like that until demand kicks in and the manufacturer needs to ramp up production while at the same time cutting costs.

Thanks Mors for the video. Yeah those seems and chunks scare me too, they are to rough and look like great places to get bacteria growing.

It would seem to me that if the cone was cast without seams and the holes in place instead of being drilled out it may have turned out better.

As for the picnic taps you could stick a racking cane into the tap and a hose on to that to get the beer into a keg.

Well they are just modeled after picnic taps. The nozzle seems shorter. I'm sure I can get some tubing on it... It will just be a pain.

I do feel like it could be a cool product if not for the manufacturing issues. I thought it was cool enough to buy at the nhc after too much drinking LOL.

I have tried it over 900 times. there are no flavors coming from the plastic. The plastic is polyethylene and polypropylene which adds less flavor than stainless steel.
(all cans are plastic lined)The product will continue to improve over time .
In reality it does every thing real breweries do plus more in that the cost is low enough that beer does not have to be transferred from the fermenter to a holding tank.

Love the idea and ingenuity - really. I'll stick with stainless though. No way I'd put that under pressure. I've been witness to a plastic keg exploding under similar pressures if not lower. Not a pretty thing.

These guys came by my store and asked us to take one and see it there was any interest in it from my customers. Victor took it and said "yeah we'll play with it" I took it out of the box and told him to ship it back just because of the poor molding. The drilled hole and the shards of leftover plastic still stuck to the drilled port. and the design issues I saw with the very small hole to dump yeast and trub. I guess if its under pressure it would assist in that but ahhhhh I dont know man looked a like an infection issue to me.

Now, Victor didn't send it back and if OnderBrew wants to "donate" it to me I would be happy to test it for them shoot a video and write a review. I'm just not going to do it "AND" pay the $100 for it.

He said he has used it over 900 times? Really thats a lot of brewing....How long have you been testing it? I have been brewing 12 years and I haven't brewed 900 batches myself....

onederbrew said:

I have tried it over 900 times. there are no flavors coming from the plastic. The plastic is polyethylene and polypropylene which adds less flavor than stainless steel.
(all cans are plastic lined)The product will continue to improve over time .
In reality it does every thing real breweries do plus more in that the cost is low enough that beer does not have to be transferred from the fermenter to a holding tank.

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+1 on doubting you've brewed 4500+ gallons of beer in this. That's also the first time I've heard anyone claim that stainless steel adds off-flavor. And what does low cost have to do with the need to transfer?

Yeah, the plastic is a deal breaker for me, too. It's too much money for something too easy to scratch.

I played with a design like this a few years back, and even called up some stainless fabricators. My goal was to get a conical bottom that could mount firmly on top of a commodity kettle. Finish your boil, chill, strap on the cone, let the trub drop out, and pitch your yeast. Eventually I lost interest, but I think it would be a very cool product if anyone ever did the details right.

onederbrew said:

I have tried it over 900 times. there are no flavors coming from the plastic. The plastic is polyethylene and polypropylene which adds less flavor than stainless steel.
(all cans are plastic lined)The product will continue to improve over time .
In reality it does every thing real breweries do plus more in that the cost is low enough that beer does not have to be transferred from the fermenter to a holding tank.

Click to expand...

I don't think getting off flavors from the plastic was on anyones mind. Getting infections from the poor molding inside the cone however... Honestly. I think with proper fittings instead of modified picnic taps and smooth molding on the inside of this... It would be a decent product.

You can change out any of the fittings to any 1/2 npt part.
This started 5 years ago with a 1 gallon version.
I can make so many batches because of the simplicity, when I want to make a quick batch I use Hop Extract YC-Tetra from YAKIMA CHIEF ( for bittering) and then only have to boil for a short time.
I also make alot of smaller batches in the 5 gallon set up. There is still plenty of C02.

This is true, but to me with the poor molding on the side of the code and the holes drilled in the plastic cone for the ports... it wouldn't be worth it to replace those fittings.

To give them a bit of a break, you can buy the cone (and drill your own holes - threaded ports are already there) and use your own bucket and you get a plastic conical for $60 and fittings. That is about $200 less than buying a 7 gallon plastic conical from the other folks.

You have to compare apples to apples. It's not a SS conical. So if you want to play with a plastic conical would you rather spend $60 and some fittings or $300? They are both plastic and really this is safer in that you can swap out parts where the other one it's one piece. It gets infected and your in trouble. Same as a plastic anything. The fittings are all 1/2" NPT so there is no reason the holes should be small, and I have heard from others that with small SS conicals the yeast tends to just stick because there isn't enough pressure to push out the yeast, so building up a bit of pressure is probably a good thing.

BUT you don't have to. You can set the relief valve to anything below 15 pis including wide open.

Personally I don't find it very appealing to serve out of the fermentor so I would probably keg it but? Maybe for a specialty brew?

how he meant the "savings" to come in is that you are not going to tie up a SS fermentor to serve from so the fact that for the price of a SS fermentor you could get a bunch of these and not keg is the "savings".

And lastly you can hook up your CO2 to one of the relief ports (it's 1/2" npt) and feed gas in the top if you really wanted to.

Personally if I was going to try a plastic conical this would probably be the one. But part of the reason I would go to conicals over buckets is the ability to scrub the suckers clean, so I'm not sold on the plastic conicals. It's true that I have had no problems with buckets so I should probable also not have problems with a conical... but a bucket is $10 or so.

I would love to try one though so if one of you has one and wants to melt it down send it to me instead.

My main issue with it isn't that it's plastic. It's the molding of the cone. To me it's the equivalent of buying a fermentor bucket that comes pre scratched...

well it's not actually scratched it has some ridges, there is a difference. I'm not saying it's any good, I have no idea - never even seen one in person, just that a lot of the criticisms were not really fair.
There are a few folks who get new buckets every year "just in case", for those people a plastic fermentor that costs more than $10 is crazy. There are some who have been using the same buckets for a decade or more. Someplace in that continuum there is probably a sweet spot for this device.

Heck if your brewing sour beers nooks and crannies are probably a good thing ;~)

I think the criticisms are fair. The cone will be more prone to infection because of the molding 'ridge' and poorly drilled holes. That is just fact. I own one of these units. The ridge is actually worse than a scratch. the worry with a scratch is you get bacteria in there and then it gets pressure applied over it and the plastic edges of the scratch get pushed down over the scratch 'sealing' in the bacteria. The ridge would be even more prone to this along both sides of it. The fittings that come on the fermenter are lame at best. Yes they can be replaced, but that's just added cost. The unit should just come with standard fittings. Would make it more appealing.

It's true you could use a bucket fermenter forever, however I doubt that would be the case if it were poorly molded and had a big scratch or ridge in it new.

I think this would be worth what they are charging if it didn't have these issues. The molding issue may seem minor to some, but it is a fundamental flaw in brewing logic.

I did buy one of these and these are just my observations of the unit. I have had it since the NHC and have been unwilling to put a beer in it yet. I should be brewing a 14% double chocolate stout soon, so I might throw a second runnings beer in there and try it out.

This is the guy who thinks everyone should be drinking terrible, cloudy homebrew. I also love how he posts videos to youtube to just take them down a couple days later when people let him know his ideas aren't great. At least he's no longer microwaving the wort (I hope).

yeah I'll agree he is not demonstrating advanced or even correct brewing techniques in his videos. But I do think his product has potential. I am liking the fact he makes the clear clones now. That's really nice. It does look like in his latest videos he has fittings that don't suck on the fermentor. If he has the molding issues corrected I think the product would be well worth the money.

Source: He posted this video on Facebook this morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tQLXuJ2EE9s

The clamp seems like it could potentially be a bit of a pain...but overall I don't think it will be too much of an issue to spend an extra 5 mins setting that up. I couldn't tell if the molding issue was still there from the video. No inside shots of the cone just outside of the clear cone...but I didn't see the molding...

The bulging bucket in the video makes me super nervous. I'm kinda upset that this product is getting such bad reviews when I first saw it I thought it was a neat idea. Good thing I found this thread to show me some insight on the product. I hope they fix all the problems so that I can still try it.

I will give the guy credit for listening to the criticisms. There are a lot of changes in how he shows to work and in components of the system.

Dan kind of convinced me on the fit and finish issues with the cone, so unless I know those have changed I would be looking at getting just the cone and doing my own drilling and reaming and maybe flame polishing. The ridges if they still exist would be a problem not easily corrected after the fact so?

JoeyChopps said:

The bulging bucket in the video makes me super nervous. I'm kinda upset that this product is getting such bad reviews when I first saw it I thought it was a neat idea. Good thing I found this thread to show me some insight on the product. I hope they fix all the problems so that I can still try it.

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You don't have to carbonate in the fermentor. You can back off the pressure valve or actually just replace all of that with a hose into a blow off jar.

I don't think I would dispense from the fermentor anyway.

And it does have a pressure plug at the top that should blow before you have a bucket failure. This is another thing that was added because of people pointing out issues.

Yeah I saw all the pressure reliefs and I also keg so I would never serve from it. But people don't always follow the directions and components fail so I would still be nervous that it would blow up and hurt some one. As others said buckets aren't suppose to be pressurized. I agree with leaving the valve open and hooking up a blow off tube rig to make me feel safer. I also noticed lots of new additions to the rig. I would still like to see the top bucket white because of leeching. But I'm really happy to see the vendor is taking all of this criticism with stride and making his product better.