Conical Practices

First of all, love my conical...no regrets... The quality of my beer has noticeably improved - not just better, but consistency and things like taking a gravity reading are a 30s process. However, with no other changes, my brewhouse efficiency has gone from +85% down near 60% with almost 0.5 gallon of beer out with dumping trub and another 1 gallon beer left in the fermenter after kegging.

Under my conical, I have a valve, a 2" dia sightglass and then another valve. After pitching yeast, I open up the top valve and let the sightglass fill. After a day, it's mostly full of trub and I dump it via the bottom valve, but a lot of beer comes with (even if I slightly close the top valve). This creates a vacuum and slowly starts to pull blow-off tube liquid up the tube. Lately, I've been hooking up CO2 during the dumping, but it's a hassle to change the blowoff to the CO2 each time I dump. How do commercial breweries do this? (does scale makes it not an issue?)

Any tips on dumping trub/harvesting yeast/etc? Or, should I just scale my 5gal recipes for 8gal boils/7gal ferm batch size?

Add a stainless T between the blow off and fermenter. Thread in a ball valve with a house barb. Seal off the blow off (that should already have a valve), open the gas, and pressurize for the trub/yeast push.

What about fully closing the valve above the sight glass when opening the bottom valve?

I would think that if it's actively fermenting, it would blow any oxygen that back flowed through the blow off out in no time.

A couple of things I've learned:

1) Lift the blow off tube out of the Star San before dumping the trub.
2) Draw about a quart of liquid or so, enough to get clear beer, out of the racking port before dumping it into kegs.

Thanks TIPA0303. I already have a T which has my temp probe, so I'll just add another with a ball valve. out of curiosity - do the big boys pressurize their fermenters? I have seen ball valves and pressure gauges...just assumed they were monitoring/releasing fermentation "pressure", not adding.

Correct that closing off the top valve, and then the bottom valve creates a chamber of oxygen that bubbles up through the beer. I fixed that by getting the bottom valve...once you open the top valve, you really have to keep it open. My top valve has 5-6 locking positions as well. Ratcheting it down to just barely open has helped...just enough pressure for some beer to flow down, but not so there's a gush/spray of trub everywhere. If I simply lift the blow off tube out of the star san bucket, it will allow O2 in.

Yeah, pressurize to about 4-5 psi to drop the yeast out. It could be conical size specific on the pressure, but I'd start with 2-3 psi and increase from there if needed. You want to drain REALLY slow when draining the yeast out so you don't "rat-hole" the trub and cause beer to just channel through before dropping all the yeast out.

laughingboysbrew said:

Thanks TIPA0303. I already have a T which has my temp probe, so I'll just add another with a ball valve. out of curiosity - do the big boys pressurize their fermenters? I have seen ball valves and pressure gauges...just assumed they were monitoring/releasing fermentation "pressure", not adding.

Correct that closing off the top valve, and then the bottom valve creates a chamber of oxygen that bubbles up through the beer. I fixed that by getting the bottom valve...once you open the top valve, you really have to keep it open. My top valve has 5-6 locking positions as well. Ratcheting it down to just barely open has helped...just enough pressure for some beer to flow down, but not so there's a gush/spray of trub everywhere. If I simply lift the blow off tube out of the star san bucket, it will allow O2 in.

Click to expand...

I work with 120BBL fermenters and we seal the blow off lines at about 80% attenuation to allow fermentation to build pressure to around 15PSI at the end. This saves us money on CO2 costs because we use endogenous CO2 from fermentation, and also allows us to have positive pressure for yeast/trub drops as well as filtration racking without needing to hook up CO2. However, we always hook a pressure umbilical from the bright tank to the fermenter to keep the head pressures balanced so tanks don't crumple.

I'm pretty sure I read that one guy put a quart sized container off the valve he had on bottom of conical. Leaving the valve open during fermentation. All the heavy stuff just settled out to there and he closed the valve and removed the container. This limited his loss to 1 qt or less. The container could be replaced and done again if need be?
I don't have a conical as yet so have no first hand knowledge.
Aloha

zzzzzzzzz said:

I'm pretty sure I read that one guy put a quart sized container off the valve he had on bottom of conical. Leaving the valve open during fermentation. All the heavy stuff just settled out to there and he closed the valve and removed the container. This limited his loss to 1 qt or less. The container could be replaced and done again if need be?
I don't have a conical as yet so have no first hand knowledge.
Aloha

Click to expand...

this is exactly what I was doing with a 2" sightglass. Problem is when you close off the top valve, remove the sightglass and then reattach, there is a chamber of air that is released up into the fermenter when you re-open the top valve. You can avoid this by putting a valve (not pictured) at the bottom and always keep the top valve open...just opening the bottom valve slightly to drain trub/yeast.

Seems though, after 2-3 dumps, a yeast pull, plus gravity checks, I have about 3/4 gallon of waste, plus the gallon or so left in the cone below the racking arm. I guess that's why I got a 14.5gal fermenter...increase batch size.

I have the same issues and this has got me thinking about options.

Here is the solution I came up with, which seems pretty straight forward and now obvious. This is so easy and I am happy with the way it works. If you supply the top with a bit of C02 pressure no air gets in the fermenter. I first started with a typical sight glass which many of you have. I was never liking the close the dump valve and then replacing it plan as I didn't like the idea of bubbling up into the wort once it started fermentation, even if you messed with trying to purge all the oxygen, just too complicated. Also it was messy.

This is a very simple idea and it works quite well so I had to share. Hope this helps someone.

The photo shows my first round using a brass hose adapter, I have replaced it with a stainless one. You attach a hose to the end and let it fill whatever container you want. You can work out the details of how you want to fill and what container you use but a bottle filler works very well.

It also works well for removing the cold break in the beginning, you only have to remove as much as you want.

I have attached the links to the parts I used here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tri-clamp-X-NPT-adapter-Male-2-clamp-X-1-4-NPT-/282025907856?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/37133732862...49&var=640453989839&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121825792222?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

(1/4" Street Elbow)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-4-2-Femal...hash=item3f3569eb72:m:mkQnMjdI0-zO3ctxLcbVw3Q

Best,

Tried dumping from my ball valve equipped Blichmann conical last night. Quite messy. Didn't get much yeast. Seemed that the geometry of a ball valve is that you get huge blast of wort around the sliver of the opened ball valve port and not much yeast.
Think I'm going to put a butterfly valve on it for the next batch.

I would question the need to have two valves. Perhaps others could explain.
I would think if you g a sight glass, you could connect that to the base of the conical, then a single valve to the bottom of the sight glass.

Dump the cold break if you like.
Do a few yeast dumps as you like.
Harvest the yeast after a cold crash if you like.

Why spend the $50-65 for a second valve and clamp between the conical and the sight glass? What does this extra valve buy you in terms of functionality or beer quality or ability to dump/harvest yeast and cold break?

TD

As my photo shows above, only with a length of hose connected, because the valve is so small, you can barely open the valve and watch the contents (the reason for a sight glass) come out at a controlled rate of speed. There is no need for a valve above the sight glass. Wish I had taken a photo of this proceedure last time, as it is pretty cool. I will next time. The first time I did this I used a separate valve between the fermenter and the sight glass but after seeing how well this works I realized that there is no need for it.

This method will not allow air into the vessel if you have it pressurized a bit, (unlike the jar method which allows air back into the system, unless you do some fancy tricks, of which you don't need to do this way.) so you can take out what you want, when you want, and as much as you want, as many times as you want. As TD mentioned this also works to remove any excess trub at the beginning of the fermentation. This is what you are looking at in my photo. I left a bit of trub on purpose to help with the fermentation.

Add at the end of the hose a bottle filler and you can prefill the receiving bottle with CO2 first like you would if you were filling a bottle of beer, then instead of beer you would fill the bottle with your yeast, then quickly cork the top of the bottle. (I like to use a champagne bottle) This method will give you plenty of yeast and little or no chance of contamination.

TrickyDick said:

Tried dumping from my ball valve equipped Blichmann conical last night. Quite messy. Didn't get much yeast. Seemed that the geometry of a ball valve is that you get huge blast of wort around the sliver of the opened ball valve port and not much yeast.
Think I'm going to put a butterfly valve on it for the next batch.

I would question the need to have two valves. Perhaps others could explain.
I would think if you g a sight glass, you could connect that to the base of the conical, then a single valve to the bottom of the sight glass.

Dump the cold break if you like.
Do a few yeast dumps as you like.
Harvest the yeast after a cold crash if you like.

Why spend the $50-65 for a second valve and clamp between the conical and the sight glass? What does this extra valve buy you in terms of functionality or beer quality or ability to dump/harvest yeast and cold break?

TD

Click to expand...

This was going to be my question. If you have a sight glass, you can see when all the yeast has dumped. Why use a valve between the sight glass and the conical?

I guess the next question is, does the sight glass help you to dump the yeast vs just watching the run-off when you open the valve? Does the cylindrical chamber help to collect more debris and less beer/wort than the conical base itself?

When I clean my conical after use, depending on the yeast strain and temp, I will always find a variable amount of crud stuck to the sides of the conical base. I don't think there is any way around this, even in a pro Uni-tank vessel. What say the folk with pro brewing experience?

TD

Remembered to take a video of the valve setup I am currently using.
See video for a quick demo. Here I am just draining a bit of trub.

This works for yeast removal straight to your container via the hose so that it doesn't get exposed to open air.

(For some reason the .mov file downloads as a .php file for me. just change it to a .mov file by renaming it and it should play.)

Does anyone know why this occurs?

View attachment FermValveWorks.mov

When primary fermentation calms down a bit, I switch my blowoff to one of these: https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/tc15blg.htm

I use a gas QD and some tubing as my new blowoff tube, which I can swap off with one from my keezer if I need to pressurize.

I collect yeast into a mason jar. I dump a lot of the the trub on the bottom first with just an elbow and a valve, then collect the good stuff into the jar from the same elbow+valve.

There's also no reason you can't keg from your dump port if you dumped all the yeast, but I only lose a pint or two from my cone.