7.5 gallon conical at morebeer.com (Q's)?

I got to looking around morebeer's site after ordering a kit to start with and noticed the conical devices.

Having no knowledge of them, did some research and this is what I assume with these things.

1. Do everything you would normally to start a batch
2. drain/pour into conical
3. stage one fermenting takes place
4. drain with bottom valve, the sludge from the bottom
5. allow secondary fermentation to work
6. open trap door and drop in the sugar solution (my description) and bottle.

seems a whole lot easier than moving from boiling pot to primary, to secondary, to bucket with spigot to bottle...

Is this correct?

Again, sorry for the newb questions but i've only been doing research since last night late.

I have cash to buy one but until my gf has assimilated fully to making beer at home, I dont want to shock her with a 600$ beer aparatus. I'll pitch it to her when the time comes, as we are in an apartment, that it's a space saving device.

Is this conical stuff the real way to go?

6. open trap door and drop in the sugar solution (my description) and bottle.

Click to expand...

Don't have one myself, though I've been eying them. I had assumed you would still rack into a bottling bucket (that had the priming solution already in it). If you just pour it into the conical I'm not sure you would get equal distribution of the solution throughout the beer. You could, I suppose, use the bottling "pellets" where you drop one in each bottle; that way you could just bottle straight from the conical.

Rick

I'm not a pro at this, but I think what you've outlined is essentially correct.

I looked at a small conical too, and decided that I'd have a harder time controlling fermentation temperature with it than I do with buckets and carboys (which I just put a big t-shirt over and keep in a tub of water), so until and unless I convert a fridge or something that a small conical will fit in, I'm sticking with the cheaper method.

BADS197 said:

4. drain with bottom valve, the sludge from the bottom

Click to expand...

I have a conical and #4 is where I always have questions. It's obvious when it's yeast but I have noticed that cold break doesn't settle in a nice even layer at the bottom of the conical and sometimes it's very difficult to tell where your break and left-over hop materials end and the beer begins.

I have a 15 gallon conical and although I havent used it yet, the main purpose for buying it was two fold. harvest yeast and reduce the beer loss to trub. as for cooling it without a chamber I plan on wrapping cloth around it then attaching a fountain pump to a shower head to keep it wet. the cloth is simply to keep more wet contact with the conical versus little streams running down with dry spots in between.

Does anyone know anything about the "externally cooled" conicals on morebeer? It is supposed to cool the beer 25-33 degrees below ambient. $1400 for a 7.1 gallon though...

for that price you could buy the conical its own cabinet and design it to fit your exact needs.