Plastic Conicals

Is there something wrong with these? Why is this only 150 bucks?

http://plastic-mart.com/class.php?item=135

Two thoughts: 1) not food grade plastic, so may not be the best to use, and 2) plastic scratches easily, providing lots of places for bugs to grow.

Why is it cheap... it is plastic, SS is expensive, plastic is cheap to produce. There are actually plastic conicals that are especially made for homebrew that will seal properly and be of good food grade plastic... Id shoot for one of those, they are still alot cheaper than SS.

I can't speak from personel experience but a friend of mine loves his and makes great beer. The life of the fermenter may be shorter, but at that price you could buy a whole bunch of plastic fermenters and spend a lot less than a single SS conical. I want to try one myself.

DSean said:

Two thoughts: 1) not food grade plastic, so may not be the best to use, and 2) plastic scratches easily, providing lots of places for bugs to grow.

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Food grade, just talked to them and they are. scratches: so do plastic buckets and plastic better bottles, just gotta be carful.

Question about headspace. Is there any reason not to get a 30 gal for 10 gal batches?

I have always been told to limit the head space... that is just more oxygen to displace with CO2 during the ferment to keep the beer from staling. 10 gallons in a 30 gallon fermenter seems like alot? Who knows?

As with any conical...how are you going to cool that bad boy? Could you fit it in a fridge?

seefresh said:

Food grade, just talked to them and they are. scratches: so do plastic buckets and plastic better bottles, just gotta be carful.

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Okay. Makes sense. Did you ask about heat tolerance? Also, it says the lid is "non-vented," so that might make creating an airlock/blowoff kind of difficult. That said, I'm still not real clear on the reason to use conicals, so that might not be right.

40 gallons, I doubt it... try convincing the wife to keep that in the spare bedroom!

greenhornet said:

As with any conical...how are you going to cool that bad boy? Could you fit it in a fridge?

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I always cool before I put into a fermenter. I suspect it would fit in my brew room so I could keep at the same temperature as my other fermenters.

I see they have 5 gallon sizes, if only they made one at 6 or 7.5. Personally I don't see anything at all wrong with these. I'm sure it would be easy to convert one to be a primary, and drilling out a hole on top and attaching an airlock would be a piece of cake. For the price, these would be the cheapest conical fermenters on the market if they can be used for making beer.

seefresh said:

Is there something wrong with these? Why is this only 150 bucks?

http://plastic-mart.com/class.php?item=135

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Seefresh, i think you have a winner there, dude.....

seefresh said:

Question about headspace. Is there any reason not to get a 30 gal for 10 gal batches?

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Would 5 gal headspace not be enough for 10 gal. for most ales? You could probably rig a blow-off for the really wicked ones....... What do you think of cpvc ball valves and pipe for the dump and sample assy?

I've seen pics on the web of guys who have these set up with the plastic ball valves and even racking ports. Not a bad set up. I wouldn't go too big though. If you put a racking port in on a 30 gallon but only do 10 gallons, you'll leave a lot of beer under the racking port. If you do 10 gallon batches, I would go for a 15 gallon fermenter. I blew the lid off my minibrew recently with a 12 gallon batch. It's going to be a pain to clean up the mess it made. Also, consider light. If your brew room is dark most of the time you should be ok, but if it gets any light you'll need to cover it up.

I got one a few months back haven't used it yet.

I have added the plumbing to the lower end however I feel like the lid needs some modifications in addition to adding a hole in the lid for an airlock and or blowoff tube.

The lid is a 2 piece unit, the female portion is threaded and attaches to the main body with screws and the larger main part of the lid screws into the part that attaches to the body.

The additional mods include removing the female portion of the lid and putting some kind of gasket between it and the main body as mine leaks pretty heavily.

I also plan to replace the sharp self tapping screws that attach the female portion of the lid to the body with nuts and bolts.

It also needed a good cleaning as it had a heavy plastcine odor that oxyclean and star-san seemed to take care of.

The seller did state to me that the material is HDPE however I saw nothing on the body to indicate what type of plastic it is.

I do think it will make an OK primary not sure if I would use it as a secondary at this point.

abracadabra said:

I do think it will make an OK primary not sure if I would use it as a secondary at this point.

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If you can't dump the yeast cake and use it as both, what's the point of even using a conical?

McKBrew said:

I see they have 5 gallon sizes, if only they made one at 6 or 7.5. Personally I don't see anything at all wrong with these. I'm sure it would be easy to convert one to be a primary, and drilling out a hole on top and attaching an airlock would be a piece of cake. For the price, these would be the cheapest conical fermenters on the market if they can be used for making beer.

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You can get the 6.5 gallon MiniBrew for $150 including shipping here(scroll down a little bit. Hell I'm really tempted, since I know I won't be able to get an ss for a few years...

FSR402 said:

If you can't dump the yeast cake and use it as both, what's the point of even using a conical?

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Yes you are right, and that was the orginal idea but unless I can get it air tight, which it's no where near airtight right now. I don't trust it for a secondary.

Maybe after I add a gasket it will be better. At this point I'm not convinced that it is also not leaking where the 2 part lid joins together. But so much water comes out the top when I tested it I'm not sure a gasket will fix it.

So the only advantage I see with this unit right now is it's easier dumping the beer out the bottom than syphoning it out the top.

But $150 + $20 for additional parts for a 16 gallon conical fermenter will be great if I can get it to the point where I have confidence it would work as a secondary too.