Brewing HLT as a Primary Fermentor?

[Gadjobrinus]

Some questions guys, thanks for the patience.

All brewing spirits condemn me to hades for this, but any reason I can't use my Spike 20 gallon HLT as a primary fermentor? I know that using a tri-ply brewing vessel for a simple open wine fermentor is a bit of...overkill, but on the other hand, I don't have any other vessel this large. I also may have an undue prejudice against plastic, so totally open to advice on that, too.

Unlike the other 2 brewing vessels, which have either a WP or Vorlauf return, this vessel just has the thermometer port, and bottom exit port. Plenty of dip tubes of various kinds for racking. (Brewing is now a kind of "maybe" thing but I don't want to "ruin" the HLT for brewing by doing this - but can't see why I would, given proper cleaning and sanitation; right?)

Finally, presuming red wine, could someone give an estimate of capacity, how much must I can load in with this? If it matters, the 20 gallon vessel is pretty close to 1:1 aspect ratio at 18 D x 22 T.

One regret is that I didn't go for T/C when setting up the brewing system. The above vessel is NPT with a ball valve. As a beer fermentor, I'm not sure on using NPT. Opinions on that for wine?

Speaking of T/C, I do have a 10 gallon square fermentor, with T/C and a butterfly valve. Anything weird about a square fermentor? And as with the 20 gallon vessel, is there a rule of thumb for me to know the overage one needs in calculating max. must volumes?

Finally, A lot of the vessels online (e.g., MoreWine) I see are quite tall. Is that normal for primary fermentors? I'm only going on memory from California, which is a really long time ago, but I thought I recalled the red wine fermentors, at any rate, getting their pumpovers, were much wider and shallower than, say, the Speidels or Blichman's I see on the web. Something like a traditional open vat v. modern CCVs. Can someone advise?

Thanks much.

 

[jgmillr1]

I'm not seeing any reason you can't use that HLT as a primary fermenting vessel. The stainless is easy to clean and sanitize.

The ball valve is the only thing that concerns me. Make sure it is stainless or absolutely do not use it. Also, ball valves have a notoriety for being difficult to clean since wine can make it to places behind the ball that are difficult to clean thoroughly. Butterfly valves are superior for sanitation since you can get to all surfaces. But for use a primary fermenter, that should be fine though T/C is better. You can buy a stainless NPT to T/C to fit your nozzle if you still want.

As far as capacity goes, my rule of thumb is that you can get about 50% of the container's volume out as liquid. So your 20gal container can yield 10 gallons of wine, which at 13# of grapes per gallon means about 130# of grape must. This gives you like 25% safety margin of the cap not over-flowing as it rises during fermentation.

The 1:1 sized containers are good if you are manually punching down the cap. A tall skinny container makes for such a thick cap that you can't punch it down and must do pump-overs. The tanks on Morewine look to be storage tanks rather than fermenters.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Thanks jgmillr1. I hear you on the ball valve, it concerns me too. I'd thought of an NPT-TC adaptor, but then aren't I still dealing with threads and their attendant issues?

Thanks too on the volume estimation. I was hoping to get closer to 15-16 gallons so that I could use a standard sanke as aging vessel, but it seems not (unless I get a larger primary going). Helpful, much appreciated.

If you or anyone might be interested, there's a pretty awesome episode of Chef Eric Ripert's (of Le Bernardin, NY) to a CA winery, don't recall the name. They are outside sipping, then they go through the winery. Walking on the (boardwalk? Is that what it's called? Shame on me - old sailor), the reds in primary and getting pump-overs. THey then move to barrelage in aging, trying many of them and Ripert goes nuts for one in particular. Except by then, it's obvious he's had a goodly amount and is quite cheerful. It goes on from there. Because my wife and I love Ripert, we loved this. I'm not sure the vintners were quite so happy about their episode on their winery.

Sorry to ask, but I'm illiterate as to anything mechanical. You're talking about this, correct?

-1/2" MPT x 1.5 TC?