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Conical Fermenter

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Ah yes --- to be young again!!

Well folks, last month, I ordered one of B3's 2.0 14-gal. conicals, burt for me it was a matter of survival. I have home-brewed for over 19 years fermenting in 7 & 5 gallon carboys, but those days are over. 2-1/2 years ago my left rotator-cuff separated, and is now held together by 3 SS screws in the shoulder. Last Sept. had another accident ( right shoulder anterior dislocation ), plus more ligament damage. Now in physical therapy & eagerly awaiting delivery of my conical, so I can brew once more. Both my Primary MD & the Orthopedic Doc said to lift nothing heavier than your d*** or you may have to get your DW feed you your grub. My old man was 86 when I put him down in Rose Hills, so if I'm lucky, I might have 6-1/2 more years of brewing. LOL to all of you!!

D-Dog
 
Well, I have 4 carboys and just put an order in for 2 of the 14.5 gal conicals from conical-fermenter.com. For 400 plus shipping I'm not sure I could build them for less that that. I have gotten into mead and apfelwein and bulk aging in the glass carboys I have is impinging on my 10 gallon batch brewing. I've already resorted to secondarying in by kegs but even with 8 kegs, I am just barely getting by.

So, for me I can invest a couple hundo in more carboys and kegs, or I can get these conicals and both improve my beer (dump trub and harvest active yeast cake) as well as reduce the amount of stuff I have to store/clean compared to the alternative expansion.

But I do agree with the idea that the 5-7 gallon fermenters are goofy. No room for expansion and limit the resale value while doing the same job as a $30 glass carboy.
 
If you want to make your neighbor brewer jealous, with his 6G frosting bucket fermenters, this will do the trick. But then again, he'll be able to afford about 800 buckets at that price, and by then, he'll open up a microbrewery that only uses old baker's buckets as fermenters.

Your neighbor may have the last laugh.

I think stainless conicals are beautiful, functional, effective, and would be nice to work with. Buckets or carboys are also functional, to a slightly lesser degree, are harder to work with, and aren't that pretty. Whether or not these differences are worth a difference of ~$750 is up to the beholder. If I had $800 burning a hole in my pocket, a Blichmann 14G tri-clamp model would be in the mail with my name on it tomorrow.
 
well i will say it, a 5 gallon Conical is just retarted !!, it makes no sents
you can use a 10 gal Conical for 5 gal batch of beer and it just cost a little bit more. after i got all my keggels built and my mash tun, i never brew less than 10 gal of beer (unless its experimental) , its the same amount of work for twice the beer thats 50% less labor.

Not a true statement at all. First of all my 5 gallon Blichman is 7.1 gallons of stainless beauty. I will never do 10 gallons of beer as I am the only one that is drinking it. I would get bored if I had that much beer of the same type. My reasons for having it are 1) Easy to clean and very hard to scratch unlike plastic. 2) I can harvest my yeast much easier than any other method. 3) I can pressurize it and push my beer with CO2 into the the keg if I choose. 4) The cool factor is also a reason. Now with all that being said is it worth $400+ I would say NO. I can make the same quality beer with a carboy. I think it is more of the cool factor plus ease of use for the most part is why I like using it.
 
I hate to spill the beans, but Randar showed me a good looking site. Anybody have any of their stuff? Great price on a 14.5, and the kettle looks very nice too. Good find. Hope they come through. And the prices don't skyrocket.

conical-fermenter.com
 
Not a true statement at all. First of all my 5 gallon Blichman is 7.1 gallons of stainless beauty. I will never do 10 gallons of beer as I am the only one that is drinking it. I would get bored if I had that much beer of the same type. My reasons for having it are 1) Easy to clean and very hard to scratch unlike plastic. 2) I can harvest my yeast much easier than any other method. 3) I can pressurize it and push my beer with CO2 into the the keg if I choose. 4) The cool factor is also a reason. Now with all that being said is it worth $400+ I would say NO. I can make the same quality beer with a carboy. I think it is more of the cool factor plus ease of use for the most part is why I like using it.

Not to mention if you get a cooled and heated version, you can't cool unless you fill it to the design capacity, i.e. 10 gallons in a 14. It won't work if you only want to brew five gallons.
 
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