Brewhemoth conicals?

I would think 3/8" studs should be plenty for 20 gallons - that's what, only 167 lbs? As long as the welds on the studs are good, I would trust one 3/8" bolt with my body weight. Hell I've done it plenty of times rock climbing with far less than a weld separating me from a fast fall and short stop

I'm considering sanitizing my Brewhemoth with boiling water before filling with wort. I've got an electric HLT and always have spare hot water left over that I could push to boiling and pump into the fermenter via a spray ball. It'd lose some heat during the pumping and spraying, but I believe it would still be well above flash pasteurization temps, which would kill anything in the weld nooks and crannies.

I'll have to run it with the thermowell in and see how hot things get.

-Joe

I soak mine in Wally Worlds version of Oxyclean for a few hours while brewing. A splash of Starsan before filling is all I do. Have between 20 and 30 batches in mine, #2 prototype, have had no problems!

would you agree that the brewhemoth is a non-sanitary unit due to the unpolished welds? Also is it worth the extra $590.00 for the weldless fermentator by Blichmann. Looks like the fermentator is a heck of alot easier to clean also as you can acces the entire inside. Just wondering as i am looking into purchasing a conical.

I've had no issue with mine. I have no problems with the welds personally. If you're super paranoid you could put boiling water in it and seal it up and let the heat and steam do it's thing. It shouldn't take a whole lot to heat the unit enough to sterilize it.

Bruwsomtin said:

would you agree that the brewhemoth is a non-sanitary unit due to the unpolished welds? Also is it worth the extra $590.00 for the weldless fermentator by Blichmann. Looks like the fermentator is a heck of alot easier to clean also as you can acces the entire inside. Just wondering as i am looking into purchasing a conical.

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i am not exactly a master at sanitized containment or anything... but i would say the polishing does nothing other than may it look nice and make clean up a little faster. as long as the welds are not pitted and have holes and gaps to harbor bacteria...then it should be sanitary as is since its 100% stainless, including the rod they used in the welds. i have seen the insides of a few brewery tanks and their welds are not exactly polished clean either... the inside of a corny keg is not exactly polished smooth and we all use those as well.

that being said... at some point i will get to polishing mine with a dremel just because i want it to be smooth... but i am not worried about the sanitaryness of it.

blichmann does fine job of doing a mega polish job and making their welds disappear... that being said... a 20 gal blichman costs twice as much as a brewhemoth... so there is always that to think about as well. if you have cash to waste anything goes really and you can pick and choose. after dropping $350 on triclover parts, valves, and extras for fun... my hemoth and more parts than i need still came in under $1000 including the chiller unit as well.

I use the Blichamnn fermenator as a primary vessel and a Brewhemoth as a green tank more or less and they both do their jobs amazingly well. For the money the Brewhemoth is tough to beat. I use Penrose kettles for my boil kettle and HLT and they are both top notch as well

I'm happy with mine. I agree that they should have polished the interior welds though.

Are the welds actualy rough to the touch or are they just discolored? Most tig welded applicatons produce a pretty smooth bead before even polishing. By the looks of the pictures on their website, the welds just appear to still have heat discoloration from the welding process. That can be taken care of with some bar keepers freind (oxalic acid). If the welds have a nice wavy,nonporous,burless appearance to them i would be fine with that.

wedge421 said:

I use the Blichamnn fermenator as a primary vessel and a Brewhemoth as a green tank more or less and they both do their jobs amazingly well. For the money the Brewhemoth is tough to beat. I use Penrose kettles for my boil kettle and HLT and they are both top notch as well

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What is a green tank?

I would assume same as a Brite tank.

Guys, I went by the Brewhemoth manufacturing facility yesterday and I think that I can put your minds at ease. I don't see a problem with any of the welds. Sure, it would be nice if all of them were polished and shiny, but they are not pitted and they are smooth. You have to keep in mind that these are hand made and there may be some imperfections as far as appearance, but functionally, they are very well built. Dale even showed me picture of one that they completely polished to a mirror shine. It was beautiful. So if you're getting this to be a show piece in your brewery, it looks great as is, but you can always get out your buffer and shine away -like the polished Sankes.

i will be placing my order.

Maybe Dale can post a pic sometime of the one he polished.... OOOO SHINY!

As "jamcclureuk" pointed out...yeah, we did a highly polished one for a special customer. This was at the demand...no, the request...of our bosses.

Just to give you an idea, it took roughly 10 hours of polishing time to make it have a mirror finish. If we took our standard labor rate plus the cost of material to polish ONE, we would have to add roughly $500 to the price of the Brewhemoth...and that could possibly be a low-ball estimate!!

It was beautiful, but wow did it take a lot of time!

Here it is


Still has a few fingerprints and stuff on it in the picture...we hadn't given it the "white glove" treatment yet!

And, before you ask...no, we are not making this an option!

WOW! how did you guys go about achieving that?

lol... not an option? hehe... yeah a lot of other companies sell the shiny bling of a polished unit... i see a few conicals around that all look the same as other ones from other comapnies... all are from china... they can pay someone like a dollar and hour to mirror polish them then add $300 to the price on the other side of the pond.

so far i have no problems with my hemoths finish or welds. like i said...i will eventually polish the welds on the inside myself... but mostly for personal joy in doing something myself and making it pleasing to my eye. functionally its good as is.

plus... the hemoth is made in the USA!

Here is a link to the method used
It only took about 5 hours plus another 3 to do the kettle, but Sully, our welder, said absolutely no more!

mwhc22 said:

lol... not an option? hehe... yeah a lot of other companies sell the shiny bling of a polished unit... i see a few conicals around that all look the same as other ones from other comapnies... all are from china... they can pay someone like a dollar and hour to mirror polish them then add $300 to the price on the other side of the pond.

so far i have no problems with my hemoths finish or welds. like i said...i will eventually polish the welds on the inside myself... but mostly for personal joy in doing something myself and making it pleasing to my eye. functionally its good as is.

plus... the hemoth is made in the USA!

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Good luck polishing them on the inside! That will be pretty hard to do I think.

Celticway said:

Good luck polishing them on the inside! That will be pretty hard to do I think.

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Yeah I don't think that will happen. The conicals that are polished have a removable top.

It's not that hard guys...jeez... I can easily get my arm inside with a dremel. Will just need to rely on video through the bottom port and feel to polish her up.

mwhc22 said:

It's not that hard guys...jeez... I can easily get my arm inside with a dremel. Will just need to rely on video through the bottom port and feel to polish her up.

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your arm must be longer and skinnier then mine. LOL

mine too!

I believe that most of these companies are electropolishing. The nearest facility that can do ours is in Chicago. So far, we have chosen not to go that route.

StMarcos said:

mine too!

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Same here. I'm lucky to be able to scrub the top weld next to where the handles are. Must be skinny arms indeed.

I have what I would think are pretty skinny arms, and one of them was on the verge of not coming out after 30s of work. Chinese finger cuffs....

lol... well i guess we have different definitions of skinny then... im 6' 2" about 200 lbs i can reach the top weld no problem with my fingers and not even put in my arm past the wrist

i can reach the the weld where the bottom cone is welded to the barrel part as my bicep gets as far as it can go in.

if i was holding a dremmel tool i could easliy reach the bottom port welds as well if i needed but they look the best out of all the welds i think and don't need anything at all as they are clean and smooth looking.

Mine arrived! It's puurrrrrty. I started a separate thread, since I took 20 pictures of it. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/brewhemoth-mega-picture-thread-274399/

-Joe

I love my Blichmann but man for the money these things are hard to beat!!

I'm still getting mine set up. I bought a 140GPH pond pump to run coolant through the chiller coils. While I love the idea of the internal cooling (and was going to do it myself until I saw Brewhemoth offered it), I have a few small issues with it:

1. The coils are 1/4" OD tubing, looks like about 3/16" ID. That is a lot of flow restriction for the pump meaning a low flow rate. May or may not be an issue, have to see in practice.

2. The coils are wound tightly against each other. Besides offering less heat transfer to the beer (probably negligible in our application), I'm concerned about sanitation. With the coils tight against one another, it's going to be much harder to clean and sanitize.

3. The ends of the coils are just cut tubing. On mine they were very roughly cut, with one of the tubes having flash that closed off half the tube. It would have been nice if they had finished off the ends and/or stuck an NPT or MFL fitting on there.


On the issue of the 45 degree cone, I was at Bethlehem Brew Works this weekend. I was *very* impressed with their beers. They had a porter that blew my mind (maaaaaaan). I wandered over to their 15' tall fermentation vessels, and what do you know - 45 degree cones.

-Joe

Agree. Also the weld on the inside of the chiller cap could have been better. While beer won't touch that area, condensation will surely drip from there down into the beer.

Hmmm..we'll have to look into ways to make the chiller more "finished".

I can say that the tightness of the coils vs. ease of cleaning did cross our minds, but we haven't had any issues to this point. Perhaps that is something worth exploring as well...

Thanks again for your honest feedback, everyone! It helps us make our product better!

nostalgia said:

2. The coils are wound tightly against each other. Besides offering less heat transfer to the beer (probably negligible in our application), I'm concerned about sanitation. With the coils tight against one another, it's going to be much harder to clean and sanitize.

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Boil it in your wort for 15 mins. Might not be 'clean' but would be sanitary. Or leave it in the HLT for the entire brew.

SankePankey said:

Boil it in your wort for 15 mins. Might not be 'clean' but would be sanitary. Or leave it in the HLT for the entire brew.

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Thanks. I'm not saying there aren't ways around it, I'd just rather have seen some space between the coils so I could clean and sanitize them more easily.

-Joe

Well, looks like the Brewhemoth price went up rather dramatically.

Wow, you ain't kiddin'! They may have priced themselves out of the market with that price jump!

Too bad. I was looking to replace my plastic conical with one of these.

JohnTheBrewist said:

Wow, you ain't kiddin'! They may have priced themselves out of the market with that price jump!

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I was able to convince my wife to get one of these for me for X-Mas at $430 a piece.... It is just not going to happen now. After you buy all of the valves, extras, etc it is out of what we can pay now. I understand that price increases happen, but this is unfortunate.

yup, priced me right out of the market. That was a huge jump in price. I can see 50 bucks but 150 not so much.

If you haven't checked out the website or the Facebook page, the reason is pretty simple. We had to buy material...and it cost considerably more than we had anticipated. I am assuming it was some combination of the dimensions combined with the thickness we needed...

Regardless, yes, the price increase as rather steep. We honestly had no other option...

I wish I could say there were options about it, but there simply aren't. I do apologize for the change, and I am sorry if this has changed anyone's opinion about us or our product...

Josh
The Brewhemoth

wedge421 said:

I love my Blichmann but man for the money these things are hard to beat!!

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not anymore, looks like they became too popular...I will be buying a blichmann now since the price increase. wont pay 185.00 more for the same clean your own welds conical.. unless they are cleaning the welds now?

31% increase on the one I bought. Oof.

While I think it's still a great deal for what you get, with that huge a price bump I think people are going to demand better finish on the interior welds and fixing of the other issues in this thread (legs, feet, chiller issues, etc).

I hope so, because I left room on my mobile stand for a second Brewhemoth

-Joe

glad I didn't wait like I originally planned!