I got sick of the valves on the racking port of my spiedel fermentors (lack of barb, small clamping area, weird hose sizes accepted) so I started looking into putting weldless bulkheads through the cap that ships with the units. In my investigations, I was hitting around $30 per fermentor to put together a hose barb, ball valve and bulkhead assembly. In looking further, I wandered to the ssbrewing website (home of the chronical and brew bucket stainles fermenters that are new to the market) and saw that they sell the rotating racking arm for around that same $30. Good deal, thought I and I put myself on the email list for some when they came in.
The next day I got an email they were in. Two days later I was drilling out my cap to accept one. After assembling for leak checking, I noticed a small leak, which would not do for a fermentor at all! I disassembled and noticed the orings looked a little small to give a good seal in this application. Off to an orings website and I picked up 3/32" thick food safe silicone orings (I also got the 1/8" thick but they were too thick doubled up in this application). Reassembled,rotating and leak free!
With the rotating racking valve/arm in place, my 60 litre Speidel drains to less than a gallon of dead space in a water test which sounds like a lot but is kind of perfect as I scale my brews for 11 gallons into the fermentor so I can get 2 clean cornies per batch. After yeast and trub, I should have less than a half gallon of wasted beer this way. Win for me! I find it too much trouble to worry about getting that last bit of beer in bottles after kegging 2 full kegs.
After the kids go back to school, I'll get a batch fermenting and report back.
Hope this helps someone.
Merry Christmas!
BSD
The next day I got an email they were in. Two days later I was drilling out my cap to accept one. After assembling for leak checking, I noticed a small leak, which would not do for a fermentor at all! I disassembled and noticed the orings looked a little small to give a good seal in this application. Off to an orings website and I picked up 3/32" thick food safe silicone orings (I also got the 1/8" thick but they were too thick doubled up in this application). Reassembled,rotating and leak free!
With the rotating racking valve/arm in place, my 60 litre Speidel drains to less than a gallon of dead space in a water test which sounds like a lot but is kind of perfect as I scale my brews for 11 gallons into the fermentor so I can get 2 clean cornies per batch. After yeast and trub, I should have less than a half gallon of wasted beer this way. Win for me! I find it too much trouble to worry about getting that last bit of beer in bottles after kegging 2 full kegs.
After the kids go back to school, I'll get a batch fermenting and report back.
Hope this helps someone.
Merry Christmas!
BSD