Brew location VS Ferment location

This is a question spawned off the 15 gal inductor cone thread.

Mostly I'm wondering about people doing larger batches; do you brew and ferment pretty much in the same location? I'll be moving outside this spring and think I'll have to stick to two buckets to keep a ten gallon batch portable.

Has anyone used tubing to transfer wort to a cooler part of the house for fermentation? (ie., patio/garage to basement)

-OCD

I brew in the garage and do the transfer on my 12 gallon batches into my conical. I then carry the conical with a helper into the basement...

Someone on here had talked about running hose from patio to basement via a window. Don't know as that anyone has ever done any hard piping. That would be nice, I don't see it being a HUGE deal to clean, as long as you can close and open both ends fully, you should be able to run a brush through the whole thing the way it looks in my head. Close it off and fill it with hot oxyclean when you're done, run sanitizer through it before you start...Hmm, copper line from outside to basement sounds like a fun thing to do!

It would be fun and cool, but what about the deadspace loss. Depending on the length of the line you could end up with 1/2-1 gallon in there.

GuateBrewer said:

It would be fun and cool, but what about the deadspace loss. Depending on the length of the line you could end up with 1/2-1 gallon in there.

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Depending on where you live your basement could be below grade.(mine is about a 9 foot drop, so I wouldn't have wort in any dead areas of the pipe/tubing. I was just wondering if anybody on this board had successfully done this. I was thinking from the CFC straight to the tubing leading to the fermenter in the basement. Strictly gravity fed.

-OCD

Yeah I wasn't seeing any possibility of wort staying inside a mostly straight copper pipe that's dropping about 8 ft to my basement...

If I ever get a conical I'll be doing just that. I already use an aquarium pump to pump the cooled wort out of my brew kettle into my fermenter buckets, so it wouldn't be a big deal to just pump strait into a conical that's already down in the basement from outside, the hose would just be a litlte longer.

I just picked up my two 35g inductor tanks and I plan on plumbing both inlet (from BK) and outlet (drain / waste) lines. Using pumps and valves at both ends you can use a bucket or the outlet line to purge the line of star san once you see wort flowing. I do this now with carboys, so it isn't much of a change for me. I pitch on cakes several times and figure once I dump initial trub (day 2 or so in ferment) I can reuse yeast quite a bit. Once I go to clean them I'll pump hot pbw water into them, soak for a bit until the crud comes loose, rinse, star san soak and they're ready to go again. I'm planning on adding a ball lock fitting to each of them also so I can pressurize with co2 to push any o2 out of the airlock and also be able to dump trub without removing the airlock. I'm trying to make as closed a system as I can so that I can reuse yeast several times without fear of contamination. I want the wort to have very little o2 contact after cooling it down, which also means the conicals have very little chance of infection. Think like a clean room, they pressurize them so dust, etc gets pushed out any leaks.

beerocd said:

Depending on where you live your basement could be below grade.(mine is about a 9 foot drop, so I wouldn't have wort in any dead areas of the pipe/tubing. I was just wondering if anybody on this board had successfully done this. I was thinking from the CFC straight to the tubing leading to the fermenter in the basement. Strictly gravity fed.

-OCD

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One of the guys in my brew club does that. He brews in the garage. Directly below is his basement with waiting conicals. He pumps from boiling wort, through the CFC and straight into the conicals. He just drilled a 1" hole through his basement floor. Very cool.

I brew in the garage and ferment in the cellar. I will pump out of my brew kettle through a cellar window to the conical. In teh past I have carried the conical full down a bulkhead with help but that is not good for my back. This makes it so much easier.