A welcome addition

[MasterJeem]

just picked this little guy up today! so excited i just started a little recipe i came up with that i think will turn out well. its a bochet braggot. cant wait to try this thing out!

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

I was recently looking at that same fermenter on ebay, decent prices, you'll have to let us know how it works.

 

[MasterJeem]

Just now filled 'er up. It's a nice, thick piece of plastic and has a pretty serious valve system. I'll probably still age my meads in a glass carboy, but this is going to be so nice for flushing lees! I'm thinking of drilling a small hole for a solid stopper and getting a long probe thermometer, putting it through the stopper, so I always have a temp reading.

 

[bconstant]

I'm very curious about the mechanism for dumping the lees. When you get to that stage it'd be awesome if you could document it for us!

 

[Native302]

where did you get that? it is awesome

 

[MasterJeem]

you're not going to like this... but my buddy gave it to me. they can be purchased from high gravity brewing .com for under 200 bucks, though.

 

[MasterJeem]

I'm very curious about the mechanism for dumping the lees. When you get to that stage it'd be awesome if you could document it for us!

i'll definitely document it. there's two valves. one a few inches from the bottom on the side of the cone and one at the very bottom. i guess the lees accumulates around there and after fermentation is done you just open er up and shut it off when its clear. technically you just racked. if using fruit, put in a muslin bag and remove it. i'll be using this in that way so i can quick change my fruits and start my secondary. 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary, a few months clearing in a glass carboy. i'm going to be churning out some serious batches with this bay boy. and now i have 2 primary vessels! my apologies to my bank account an liver...

 

[MasterJeem]

i dumped the lees today and was expecting sludge to come out like soft serve ice cream, but it was just really cloudy beer. i'm wondering if it flocculated correctly or if i'm having some sort of issue.

 

[roadymi]

I had a different assumption on how these were intended to be used. I thought the intention was to use the upper valve to drain off your clean and lee free brew, then use the lower valve to clean out the lees.

Cone shaped devices do not empty strictly by bottom first. The product along the slopes actually empties out last! I have to believe you will lose a lot of your precious brew trying to drain out the lees from the bottom.

 

[MasterJeem]

Hmm... Doesn't leaving it on the lees cause it to have off flavors and kind of defeat the purpose of not having to rack?

 

[fatbloke]

Hmm... Doesn't leaving it on the lees cause it to have off flavors and kind of defeat the purpose of not having to rack?

No, not necessarily. In fact, there's a number of yeasts that are good for that. It's more of a case of which yeasts are bad for it.

The one that is famed for giving off flavours, makes some excellent meads, yet causes "autolysis" if left on the lees, is 71B.

From memory, the two terms to check, are "sur lie" ageing and batonage/batonnage (spelling ?).

 

[MasterJeem]

I'm using a white labs cream ale yeast