Homemade conical fermenter.....sorta

Hairbrained idear just popped into my head....
I use an old 10gallon corny as my fermenter....why not just turn it upside down and use it like a concial? The long dip tube can serve as the blow off tube, I can cut another dip tube to sit right above a yeast cake for taking gravity readings and what not. AND I could modify the valve in the lid to serve for yeast harvesting!

Whadya think?

http://www.fermentap.com/valvekit.html, and apparently, it doesn't work very well. The sides of a carboy aren't sloped enough.

However, someone on here built one from a giant funnel (from any LHBS) and a 5gal bucket... I believe the posting was "$50 conical" or something like that...

*EDIT* DING DING: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=30638

*EDIT EDIT* - somehow I read corny as carboy - everyone else is paying attention except for me... sorry.

kvh

Well it wouldn't have that ... you know.. conical aspect. You couldn't use it to dump yeast.

That said, many do ferment in cornies. Your just not getting the other benifits of a conical. And you wouldn't need to turn the corny upside down.

Use the air side as blow off. And then after a few day take it off so the beer can car natually as it finishes fermentation.

If you want the dip tube obove the yeast cake, then use a shorter dip tube. or put a piece of tubing on the end and curve it so it faces up a couple inches.

Yeah, I know it's not truly a conical, but the 10gal kegs are sloped a LOT more than the 5gallon cornies. I already use them for fermenting, but was thinking that if I had it upside down, I could:
1: Avoid siphoning altogether
2: Make it simple to harvest yeast during fermentation
3: Make it easy to sample beer during fermentation
4: 100% sanitized transfer from kettle > pump > CFC > fermenter > storage

Hmmm....this is looking better and better....

You can do all that without turing it upside down. Excpet the harvst yeast part, and I'm not sure how you would do that upside down. Enlighten me if you have a mthod thought out.

Sorry Denny, didn't see your post until today!
I planned on removing the pressure relief valve and probably drilling out that hole until it was big enough to fit a valve capable of delivering the viable yeast.

Ahh.. well let us know how that works out.

meh, it was just an idea....not sure I'll ever get around to doing it. One reason is due to lack of space. It'll be a lot harder to fit an upside down keg on a stand in the fridge for crash cooling. But I still really like the idea of not siphoning anymore....

What about using an upside down sankey? If I remove both check valves from a coupler, then drop the liquid part into a blowoff, and put a valve on the gas connector of the coupler. Couldn't I then open the valve to collect the yeast. Then open it later to drain the beer into another keg; preferably while connecting CO2 to the liquid port to keep the beer from ever touching air. My thinking is that the top of the inside of a sankey typically is slightly conical (at least both of my 5G sankeys are). My only concern is that the trub might not drain well through the gas valve mechanism on the spear; if I did a good job keeping hops and other crap out, so that the trub is mostly yeast I think it could work, but I'm not sure if I'm going to try it. Might combine this with trying to rig up a spunding valve and ferment under pressure; although that might be trying to do too many things at once...

This may be crazy, but why not just leave the dip tube all the way at the bottom, then when you wanted to get some yeast, must hook a sanitized hose to the "out", put the other end in your collection vessel, and then hook up your CO2 to the gas side. Turn on the gas a little bit and collect your yeast that way. It won't be the same as a conical, but a non-conical vessel never will. You could hook yourself up with a side-port racking arm on the corny and rack off the trub after fermentation is over...