idea from a mash tun for a conical

[calicojack]

So i'm thinking about how i want to do my rotating arm in my conical. after looking at some mash tun designs i have a question:

If i put in a "mash tun" style drain, is there anything i could put inside the braided mesh to filter out yeast/lees?

 

[audger]

you dont filter the beer thru the yeast cake when you rack out of a conical.

you rack from above the yeast cake so that you never even touch it. by the time you are removing the beer, the yeast will have settled into a nice cake at the bottom. after you remove the beer from the racking port above the yeast cake, you open the dump valve at the very bottom of the cone and remove the yeast and trub.

 

[calicojack]

What i'm thinking about doing is an alternative to a "rotating racking arm". Basically I want to do a 90 elbow from the interior wall, do another 90 to where the "arm" is laying only mm's away from the top of the yeast cake.

basically this:

but i need to know if there is a material that i can put in there to filter any lees that might get picked up.

 

[LordUlrich]

I highly doubt you will find a material that will work to filter the yeast and other sediment in the fermenter. In the mash tun the grain bed is actually the filter, not the hose (the false bottom just holds the filter in place). For filtering yeast you will not have the advantage of the grain bed, so you need a much larger surface area to prevent clogging of your filter (why plate and frame filters are used, and they clog despite the huge surface area)

 

[audger]

Basically I want to do a 90 elbow from the interior wall, do another 90 to where the "arm" is laying only mm's away from the top of the yeast cake.

whats the purpose of this? to get every last drop of beer?

you need to think about how you will actually use this, as you wont be able to stick your arm in the top of the fermentor to position it half way thru the fermentation. it will have to be in place before you put beer into the conical. you will have to know how high the yeast cake will be before it forms. the density of the yeast is close enough to the density of the beer that you wont be able to rely on something like this "floating" on the yeast cake. and if you put it in there before racking beer into the conical, the yeast floculates downward, so it will end up settling ontop of whatever this device is.

yeast cells range in size from 1 to 50 microns, larger if they are in flocs. you will need a filter 5 microns or smaller in size to be an effective yeast filter. i think this is more work/headache than necessary. just use the normal racking arm.

 

[calicojack]

whats the purpose of this? to get every last drop of beer?

you need to think about how you will actually use this, as you wont be able to stick your arm in the top of the fermentor to position it half way thru the fermentation. it will have to be in place before you put beer into the conical. you will have to know how high the yeast cake will be before it forms. the density of the yeast is close enough to the density of the beer that you wont be able to rely on something like this "floating" on the yeast cake. and if you put it in there before racking beer into the conical, the yeast floculates downward, so it will end up settling ontop of whatever this device is.

yeast cells range in size from 1 to 50 microns, larger if they are in flocs. you will need a filter 5 microns or smaller in size to be an effective yeast filter. i think this is more work/headache than necessary. just use the normal racking arm.

makes sense