Mixing ingredients in a conical fermentor.

[jpd1009]

Hi,

I have made a few coopers recipes, fermenting in a S/S keg king conical fermentor.

The ingredients always consist of the syrup concentrate, dry ingredients, i.e. dextrose, dry malt, etc, and water.

I have always struggled to get my head around just dumping the ingredients into the fermentor then giving it a stir. Doing this the syrup will never really mix through as it will head to the bottom and into the outlet pipe and sit undisturbed.
In addition that dry ingredients with all the lumps!

I have been been mixing everything together in a regular pot to insure no lumps and all the water & syrup us mixed. Then transfer into the fermentor.

I would love to dump it all in the fermentor.

Looking for some assurances or some tips.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

I would suggest keep doing it the way you are doing it.

Firstly because of the mixing reasons you have considered, and mixing liquid malt extract is always difficult even without the pipes and ports of the conical getting in the way.

Secondly, you will get away from the pre-hopped Coopers kits to extract recipes, possibly with grain steeping. Those require heating and boiling as part of the recipes and working the current kits with a regular pot will allow you to simply extend that process rather than relearn it.

A tip when dealing with the dry ingredients is to treat them like you treat thickeners like corn flour. Put the dry powder into a bowl and add a small amount of hot water, mixing and stirring to wet it through, adding more as needed. It is a lot easier to break lumps apart when they aren't floating in deep water.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

A tip when dealing with the dry ingredients is to treat them like you treat thickeners like corn flour. Put the dry powder into a bowl and add a small amount of hot water, mixing and stirring to wet it through, adding more as needed. It is a lot easier to break lumps apart when they aren't floating in deep water.

Building on this idea, there are DME+steep recipes over in "I Brewed A Favorite Recipe" (link) that use this approach: 30 min boil with roughly half the water / DME up front, use some of the remaining water to make the slurry with the rest of the DME. No clumps, no lumps, no scorching, no need for frantic stirring, ...