Best stainless steel conical for cider?

[412CiderGuy]

I am looking to upgrade to a steel fermenter but not sure what’s the best one for cider. Ideally I would like one vessel that I can use for primary, secondary, and carbing (not sure if that even exists but that would be awesome). It would also be great if it had some temp control
As it’s in my garage.

I’m looking at SS brewtech and Blichmann at the moment but open to anything.


Appreciate any advice!

 

[MarkKF]

Do you mean like a bright tank that will hold pressure while it naturally carbs? Or are you putting it under CO2 pressure? Either way you can do everything you want in a corny keg for $100s less.

 

[MarkKF]

I’ve heard of people who have modified a corny lid for a blow off tube, check valve and airlock. Then you use what you like for primary & secondary. You can even push the lees up the tube with a little CO2 pressure.

 

[412CiderGuy]

So I have 10 corny kegs now that I use to force carb but I want to start using more professional equipment to get used to it (tri clamps, cold crashing in vessel, etc). I’ve basically maxed out what I can do with carboys and cornies and want to make that next step!

 

[FLYPacNW]

I hope it's okay to revive an old thread.

We recently bought a new house that has a perfect spot for a mini-cidery space, in addition to 7 mature apple trees and 2 or 3 mature pear trees... given the perfect circumstances the wife let me splurge on a legit setup of two stainless conicals and a glycol chiller. I was initially smitten with the Anvil brewing conicals, but the more research I did the more SS Brewtechs Chronical BME's stood out to me. The quality and engineered perfection in these suckers are nothing less than professional. They quite literally are scaled-down versions of the high-end equipment you'd see at your favorite successful brewery or cidery. They're the sparkling missile silos that are so eye-catching on brewery tours. And now I have a pair of them (albeit small 14-gallon ones) in my house! It's so rad! I've been working on setting them up, the initial cleaning, and passivation to get them ready for the apples to become ripe for pressing. I could not be more impressed.

While they did cost more, the selling point was not only the quality but the fact that all the butterfly valves, coils, o-rings, and such are included. The whole thing is designed with zero dead space to disallow places for contamination to propagate and so they can be cleaned without taking the whole damn thing apart.

My wife is a germ-a-phobe so the fact that closed transfers are easily and ergonomically possible is a major plus. I'm sure we'll be adding a brite tank or two in the future so we can hold our favorite ciders at the ready (I like dry, she likes semi-sweet) and bottle as needed. The messiness of carboys was a turn off to her, while the clean, smooth functionality of this will make the process much more enjoyable. It's work the expense in my opinion to go the extra mile and invest in SS Brewtech.

 

[doublejef]

I hope it's okay to revive an old thread.

Well I think we can tolarate the dig out but telling all this this without giving a picture is quite harsh.

 

[Golddiggie]

I've been very pleased with my Spike conical fermenters (two CF10's so far). When I'm ready to go to either 1bbl, or beyond, there are a couple of makers I'll be looking at. Brewers Hardware is on that short list. As is Stout Tanks. I've had more recent communications with Curtis from Brewers Hardware, so they're pretty much at the top of that list.

 

[FLYPacNW]

Well I think we can tolarate the dig out but telling all this without giving a picture is quite harsh.

Fair enough! Sorry that it took so long. The fermenter on the left is currently empty, but the one on the right has 8 gallons of locally grown apple juice cut with some fresh organic juice from whole foods to increase the brix. 8 gallons is about 2/3 of the effective capacity of these 14-gallon Chronical BME's. 14 gallons is the geometric volume while the effective capacity maxes out at about 12 gallons to leave headspace for the chapeau braun.

We used early-drop fruit - mostly Gravenstein and McIntosh from a local orchard where my dad volunteers. Given they were pre-ripe the brix was way low, so some super sweet grocery store juice helped a lot. The main mission in collecting the fruit drop was to test out the cider press my dad just built (pic below). We knew going in that the fruit was pre-ripe and was in the wake of an extreme heatwave we had in the Pacific Northwest. So basically what we have here is a "sea trial" of sorts for the cider press and this sweet new cidery setup. All systems will require some tweaks and adjustments, but I'm glad to be able to test the system out on actual juice without having to use expensive or precious must from true cider apple cultivars.

The chiller is awesome. It holds temperature really well with a selectable Hysteresis and temps selectable down into the teens...get your glycol blend right or these temps will freeze your lines solid. I found the proper glycol solution to be more difficult to find than I expected, so plan ahead or be prepared to fork over some cash to order it online. The weight of it makes shipping ridiculous. I bought the last 3 gallons that Windsor Home Brew in Los Angeles had and brought it back to Washington with me.

I also added a Tilt Pro and the repeater. There was some feedback from contributors here as well as from Noah at Tilt that when using stainless fermenters the Tilt Pro is much better but adding the repeater makes it very reliable and powerful. We have a pretty large house (4,000+ sq ft) with the cidery on one end on the lower level. I can get the Tilt info on my phone from all but the most distant corners of the house...which doesn't matter since those are guest rooms and such. The Raspberry Tilt Pi was much easier to set up than I expected (and I am NOT a programmer by any stretch). This was a no-brainer addition for me. I travel for a living so being able to monitor my cider while I am away is great peace of mind in case something fails or the fermentation stalls.

Now I just can't wait for racking time when I get to transfer to the other fermenter using either a pressure transfer or a chugger pump (still on order). No more sucking on siphon tubes and spilling product everywhere.

Coming later (after the tide comes back in on my bank account) is a pair of 10-gallon Brite tanks with the same FTSs controllers so we can enjoy the finished cider right out of them, bottle it at a later time, or if we want to send some home with a friend.

 

[cortex]

Love the setup! I've been considering going for a stainless conical for my own ciders, would you say that it's worth the upgrade?

 

[FLYPacNW]

Absolutely. No question. If I could have only one reason to make it worthwhile, then the ability to do closed transfers or bottling makes it worth it. No mess, no contamination. No sucking on siphon tubes or fiddling with those stupid siphon pumps. The whole cider room remains clear of the kitchen or garage with the exception of the minutia of time spent cleaning the equipment (we don't have water access in the cider room, which is actually our walk-in pantry). The whole process feels professional and that (to me) makes the whole process infinitely more enjoyable. Not only do I enjoy enjoying (can I say that?) my own cider, but I now enjoy every step of how I got there.

The idea of glass carboys and siphon pumps and stuff is great, and I still use them, but I'll now reserve them for collecting juice when and where I can find it or perhaps putting an "au natural" batch out in the shop to ferment over the winter just to see how it goes.

If you go with a stainless setup, consider all of the accessories you would need. Coils, chillers, butterfly valves, hose connections, temp controllers, etc... I priced out several products, some all-inclusive and some that would have required piecing together a system. I settled on the complete setup from Ss Brewtech which was priced at the higher end of the spectrum. Not only was I convinced that their quality was first-rate, but their service and communication standards are absolutely excellent. I've been up and running for a couple weeks now, and I'm still shooting them messages asking questions. I always get a thoughtful, patient detailed response. They genuinely make an effort to understand and thoroughly answer your question. Having all of my equipment from them means that I can connect the dots on every piece of equipment and get it right.

Furthermore, they are in the business of building large-scale products for breweries and such. With their homebrew stuff, they have simply scaled their big guns down to the homebrew sizes that have the same form, function, and tolerances as their big stuff. As a result, their instructions and Support page on their site are both pretty darn good. They even site NASA research for Pete sake when explaining Passivation. (BTW you're going to need several POUNDS of Citric acid to passivate your vessels...the 14 Chronical BME needs 4-5lbs of Citric acid just for passivation. Do not use Star San as it says in the instructions...because NASA )

I realize that's an expensive investment, but the simplicity and savings in time and effort are worth something as well. Additionally, the piecemeal setups I considered would have cost about 80% of what this setup did...the simplicity, convenience, clean, streamlined setup I have here was worth that extra 20% if you ask me. I had a nice Excel document worked up to compare the projects but I deleted it so I wouldn't revisit it later and wish I had saved 20%. That said, I am sure I am going to remain very happy with this setup for a long time.