Ultimate Conical Fermenter design

Hi,

We have a home brew setup and want to improve the fermenter.

We currently brew about 22 gallons, but hope to increase that to about 35gal soon. Or we will make two worts and transfer both to one fermenter.

My goal is to build an ultimate fermenter. I’m looking for designs I can compile to get my ultimate conical fermenter with glycol-jacked, etc designed so we can build it. We have access to a shop where we can weld stainless steel …

I’m soliciting advice on my current approach (Eric Lowe’s post helped) and I’m looking for actual plans:

Attributes and advantages
Conical: Save yeast from secondary to repitch so you can do Primary and Secondary fermentation in one vessel, easy to clear because cone encourages flocculation
Stainless steel (Sanitary, can make into a pressure vessel, etc.),
Pressure Vessel: Rack with CO2 to keep away from Oxygen,
Pressurized fermentation possibly, by replacing airlock with relief valve at end of fermentation
Glycol-Jacketed: heat and cool for temperature control

Volume I can adjust when we design it, but I’m thinking for 44gal we need some headspace so maybe a total of 55gal conical fermenter.

Does anyone have plans for any of these components we can add to our design. Most notably, the Glycol-Jacketed design is not shown in many places. Thanks.

Before I worried about a better fermentor, I'd work on a safer brewing system.
Climbing from a chair to get on the platform to stand on a milk crate, on a chair, sitting on a table?

I'm thinking buy a pump or two, make that thing a one tier, then start on a conical project.


Sorry if that sounded preachy, that's just a scary picture.

+1 on the pump, or maybey a 12ft latter?

Plan9 said:

Before I worried about a better fermentor, I'd work on a safer brewing system.
Climbing from a chair to get on the platform to stand on a milk crate, on a chair, sitting on a table?

I'm thinking buy a pump or two, make that thing a one tier, then start on a conical project.


Sorry if that sounded preachy, that's just a scary picture.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I would hate to lose a fellow brewer to a brew day accident!

We have already upgraded the system's tower so its a very stable platform, its just not shown. Our next concern is the fermenter. There are many places we could improve, this is where the team believes our largest impact will be on speed and quality and ease of brewing.

thanks for all the concern. i'm going to repost this because that clearly derailed the question, my bad for not making it clearer that we are safer now.

I'm really interested in the opinions regarding my dream design for a conical fermenter. I'll add the pump. regards.

Well, while I'm waiting delivery of my jacketed 14 gallon fermenter I am also researching the process of manipulating temperature over time to avoid the limitations that any given fermenter design will - of a certainty - impost on a brewer.

It's such that one almost needs a different fermenter for every different approach to brewing.


The Blichman effort is prolly the closest to the Ratio of height to width but not perfect for all styles. The tall slender chinese conicals are inherently more friendly to super blonds.

Some people still prefer square box style fermenters and some even still ferment in open round tanks substantially more shallow than they are wide.

The ultimate fermenter would be able to speak to the yeast and inquire of them what they would most prefer.

Absent that, I'm willing to try to let the yeast lead the way and try to maintain a happy environment for the little suckers.

Well, while I'm waiting delivery of my jacketed 14 gallon fermenter I am also researching the process of manipulating temperature over time to avoid the limitations that any given fermenter design will - of a certainty - impost on a brewer.

It's such that one almost needs a different fermenter for every different approach to brewing.


The Blichman effort is prolly the closest to the Ratio of height to width for some universal ideal, but not perfect for all styles. The tall slender chinese conicals are inherently more friendly to super blonds.

Some people still prefer square box style fermenters and some even still ferment in open round tanks substantially more shallow than they are wide.

The ultimate fermenter would be able to speak to the yeast and inquire of them what they would most prefer.

Absent that, I'm willing to try to let the yeast lead the way and try to maintain a happy environment for the little suckers.

Not sure about overall design, but I think the basic calcs are as follows, assuming a conical with the desired 60 degree slope. I have a spreadsheet that by plugging in the radius and tank (cylinder part) height it will compute the total volume and size. Basically the radius drives the volume of the cone, then play with the tank height to get the desired volume.

radius: 12 44.30 Gallons
tank ht: 16
cone ht: 20.8 ·*** Height of Cone = Square Root [Diameter squared – (Diameter/2) squared]
Total HT: 36.8 ·*** 1 cubic foot = 1728 cubic inches
·*** 1 cubic foot holds 7.38 gallons of water

Cyl Vol: 30.91 ·*** Volume of Cylinder = Pi x radius squared x height/1728 * 7.38
Cone Vol: 13.39 ·*** Volume of Cone = 1/3 x Pi x radius squared x height/1728 * 7.38
Tot Vol: 44.30 gallons

ttiwwp....

+1 to seeing the hazardous brewing conditions

Read up on fermenter geometry. There is as much information on this as there is on yeast management.