Do you have the screen around the floating dip tube? I hop in the fermentation keg maybe not NEIPA amounts of hops though I’m working up to it. Also, I swirl/slosh the keg some as fermentation is wrapping up, to hopefully sink some of the free hops. I haven’t had a clogged poppet yet.
This thread got me rethinking a few things. The problem with keg fermenting for me was always the self-limiting volume factor of 5 gallons, minus necessary head space and volume loss due to yeast/trub settling. So, I got a stainless conical so I could dump trub, harvest yeast, and get some control over temperature. That led to glycol chilling. But that wasn't enough since I couldn't spund in the fermenter, which led to a unitank. The unitank solved all my problems, except one: tying up my single vessel for 4-6 weeks (ales) or even longer (lagers).
This time of year with summer diversions interfering with my brewing timeline for Fall competitions, I came up short on the time factor. The obvious solution was to dust off the original conical, thus doubling my brewing capacity and effectively reducing the overall timeline by 50%. The only way to replicate my process was to go with keg fermenting. What I decided to do was get a Kegland Kegmentor with floating dip-tube.
I needed the extra keg space for (6) 5-gallon simultaneous brews, and of course I only had (5) 5-gallon kegs. I do have (4) 2 ½ gallon kegs and a couple 6L Torpedo kegs, so I can at least transfer my current "serving beer" into smaller kegs and keep the kegerator functioning for daily consumption, which frees up all of my 5 gallon kegs. I have a Helles in the unitank, a Blonde that I brewed 5 days ago in the conical, and a Kolsch that had been in the conical for 5 days under temperature control at 63F now spunding in the Kegmentor at room temperature. The volume of the Kegmentor is 7.2 gallons, so I was able to pressure transfer a full 5+ gallons worth of mostly fermented Kolsch out of the conical and allow for normal settling losses which will stay behind in the Kegmentor. The pressure is already at 15 psig and ready to go into the beer fridge to cold crash to 35F. After crashing for a week it'll be ready to do a pressure transfer to a 5 gallon serving/bottling keg, fully carbed and hopefully cleared and ready for bottling for the comp.
The final "cherry on top" came after I pressure transferred from the conical to the Kegmentor. Just under 6 gallons of mostly settled beer went into the Kegmentor leaving close to a gallon in the bottom of the conical. I dumped the remains into a 1 gallon jug, and after "washing" the remains recovered close to 2L of very clean and very viable
dense WLP-029 Kolsch yeast slurry. The Kegmentor is doing the work of a Brite tank at a fraction of the cost. I can replicate the process and timeline I use with the unitank with the only real difference being that I need to crash and condition the Kegmentor beer in the beer fridge instead of simply hooking up a glycol line, all with virtually no oxygen exposure.