Blichmann Fermenator, upgrade or sell..

[Bean]

Hey all! Wanted to get some opinions on if its worth trying to upgrade my Fermenator or replace it with a Spike.

I have a 14 Gallon Fermenator and want to add fermentation control, which I have priced out at around 170 bucks for the coil and jacket, which is the easy part. The hard part, I want to also upgrade the dump and racking ports to larger and more useful sizes.. So, I would attempt to use Bobby's True Weldless bulkheads to upgrade the racking port to 1.5 inch TC and the dump to 2 inch. Assuming that would work I'm looking at around another $120.00. So, for simple math, call it an even $300.00 to upgrade, assuming nothing goes wrong expanding the existing holes and creating new ones in the existing lid.

The reason I am considering doing this is because I picked up a new Spike CF15 and love the larger ports and ability to use all the temp control features from 5 to 15 gallons. So, the question is, spend $300 to upgrade (half the cost of another CF15) or sell the Blichmann and put that towards getting another CF15? Currently, my thinking is to sell the Blichmann because there are addition added features the Spike does which the Blichmann does not, the main one being under-pressure fermentation and I don't know how small of a batch I can do in the Blichmann and still utilize the cooling coil.

Would love some of your thoughts.

 

[rwinzing]

I get your issue. I got a good deal on a 14 gallon Blichmann but I needed to add the coil to use with my glycol unit and other odds and ends. I didn't even upgrade the valves yet as it is the third fermenter in my rotation. I also have two SS brewtech 7.5 gallons BME. If I were to do it over again I would not have gotten the Blichmann and ordered a third SS brewtech. So I guess what I am saying I would sell it especially if you need to put another 300.00 into it. Once you sell it you are just about there and getting the features you want.

 

[Bean]

yup.. that's the way I'm leaning. Thanks for the input, @rwinzing

 

[rwinzing]

yup.. that's the way I'm leaning. Thanks for the input, @rwinzing

Glad I could help!

 

[Vale71]

Keep in mind that weldless TC connections are not sanitary and will have to be disassembled and cleaned after each batch.

 

[Bobby_M]

Blichmann has a lot of nice innovative products but their conical is garbage. Narrow weldless components are not ideal. Ive converted plenty of them to full sanitary TC welded in and that is the only way to put them on par with other brands.

 

[augiedoggy]

You can easily cool with a more practical and easier to clean and maintain jacket like these too.. I use one on my stout 12.5 gallon conical
http://www.gotta-brew.com/products/cool-zone-cooling-jacket.html works better to insulate as well.
this conical is one example where American made is not superior unfortunately as these were designed a decade or more ago when TC fitting were just not a thing in home breweries. I'd hate to think about what these would cost to be made functionally equivalent with the chinese counterparts.

 

[Bean]

I absolutely agree. Blichmann set a standard which a lot of home brewers once hoped to get to unfortunately they didn't innovate quickly enough and now they are falling behind. Yes, I could spend the money to have it altered but to Bobby's point it just gets them slightly on par, It still isn't rated to carb in and since it wasn't designed to have full TC racking arm or fermentation control everything will be custom to get it to perform like the out of box solutions we have available to us today which were engineered to do things from the start.