Grainfather Conical Fermenter Owners Thread

[Jocky]

Here’s a question for the math nerds. I want to start adding gelatin finings to the fermenter without any oxygen ingress. Here’s my plan.

I have a small soda bottle that I will pressurize to about 10 psi via a carbonation cap. I’ll then transfer the gelatin finings into the fermenter that is at 0 psi through the ball lock gas post on the lid (see picture). Also,
This will be after a cold crash of the beer. Being that the fermenter isn’t able to take pressure beyond 1 or 2 psi, will the small soda bottle introduce enough pressure on the fermenter? I can’t imagine that it would make that much difference. Obviously the head space is reduced with the finished beer, so maybe it would?

If this doesn’t really work, I will just do it in the keg. However, I would prefer to add finings to the fermenter.

This is essentially what I want to do but with the fermenter.

Interested if this worked? I'm thinking it would work - the pressure is in the bottle to push out to the fermenter, but the only issue is that any pressure above the couple of psi the fermenter can handle will pop out through the lid seal.

My only comment is that I've usually found that adding gelatin tends to work a bit better when added to the keg before racking chilled beer into it. It just mixes completely that way, whereas squirting stuff into a fermenter just doesn't.

 

[phishie]

Anyone try a unit like this to keep water cold in an ice chest? I currently use the GF pump to keep my ales cold in the garage, but with summer approaching I'm trying to avoid the glycol chiller for a single GF conical. This is my current set up (below). I'm thinking a little aquarium cooler could keep that water in the ice chest colder than using frozen water bottles. It would theoretically be A LOT more convenient and consistent.

View attachment 765845View attachment 765846

Are you still using this setup with a cooler of ice water? I'm considering trying this indoors (~68 ambient) with ice water either in my 35 degree keezer or in a cooler. I'm curious if I would be able to keep a fermenting lager at 50 degrees with that set up or if 4 gallons of ~35 degree water won't be sufficient to keep the fermenting beer that low. I expect the insulated jacket will be necessary on the GCF.