My Slide Out Conical And some new trub gadgets

Hi everyone.
Just about finished my fermenting box. I used an old chest freezer, rotated the compressor 90 degrees and stood it upright like a normal fridge. It is bolted to the table it sits on.
I made a U shaped frame from 5mm thick mild steel plate and positioned the rollers to take the aluminium sliding rods. This lets me pull the conical out of the fermenter in order to do trub dumps and stuff.
I have also made extension rods which will let me pull the thing right away and therby give me as much room as I need to put smaller carbouy`s and things into the back of the fermenter. Oh yeah I also tiled the whole thing to keep it clean.
That`s my daughter doing the load test, I have also hung on it with my 95 kilos.
Sorry the pics are all on top of each other, but I don`t know how to seperate them.
More to come.

Here`s the extensions

Here`s the gadgets.
I`m hoping to use my syringe type system to take trub dumps.

Because the plunger has a course thread I can open the gate valve and rotate the nut to slowly extract the trub.
Once the Polycarb tube is full I can close the gate valve and unscrew the whole syringe tube from the gate valve and empty the trub.
If the gunk is stuck to the taper in the conical I can insert the stiring mechanism to free it up.
I can repeat this until there is no more trub, and also push whatever beer is in the tube back into the conical and close the gate valve.


I will also add another screw on cap to the bottom of the gate valve to keep it sanitised.
I could also make another screw on cap which holds a gas connector fitting for adding oxygen thru the gate valve.

I`m yet to make a lot of the parts so please have a look at this animated gif

I'll take one of those trub traps..

thanks kgalle, I am making slow progress and hope to manufacture some of my ideas soon.
I also considered using a magnet rotating around the bottom part of the cone and driving a stir bar, the magnets I had were too week and could not penetrate the plastic wall which I guess is around 10-12 mm thick so I thought up the long rod drive.

I was wondering if an exit port near the top of the polycarbonate pipe would help. So draw the trub into the pipe, close the gate valve and then push the plunger up to dispense the trub thru a pipe to waste.

This is awesome! When I do my Conical, I'm going to consider this...

good innovative design.

That's friggin' awesome! Nice job on the design, and the execution!

It's beautiful. I have a similar conical and will be watching for updates and maybe a DIY.

thanks for all the nice comments.
If there was enough interest I`d attempt a diy.
I`m real lucky to be able to use my place of work out of hours and can use all the cnc lathes and milling machines and stuff.
Next I need to make up a top for my conical, i don`t really fancy the screw lid it came with.
I think all I need is a krausen tube outlet which could double as my cooled wort inlet from my chiller pump.

If you`d like to see other ideas I`ve built for my brew system have a look here
hover your mouse over the numbers to show more pics.
Site is not finished so not all the links work yet.

Jumpin' Jimminy!

Won't turning the freezer on it's side destroy it because the oil will leak out of the compressor?

There is enough length on the copper pipes attached to gently rotate the compressor 90 degrees into its new but still upright position. Just take your time doing it.

jetmac said:

Won't turning the freezer on it's side destroy it because the oil will leak out of the compressor?

Click to expand...

The OP stated that they "rotated the compressor 90 degrees". I would imagine they did this to address the oil issue.

here`s a nice video showing the oil lubrication in action. I don`t think the compressor has to sit exactly flat as there is enough oil level to compensate.
Start watching from around 5.40 to see the oil pumping

I honestly thought I was looking at a shower with handrails in the first picture. Love the slide-out.

Thanks BrewThruYou
I know a lot of guys wont be able to make their own slide parts, I recommend they look at `heavy duty` drawer slide rails there`s plenty available that can take the weight.