• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

Inverted carboy fermenter?

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

casebrew

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 11, 2005
Messages
856
Reaction score
8
Location
San Diego
Pros and cons of inverted carboys as fermenters? Cost don't count, I'll 'homebrew' my own. With a lazy susan bearing in it so I can swirl the trub off the shoulder into the neck.

Any input?
 
casebrew said:
Pros and cons of inverted carboys as fermenters? Cost don't count, I'll 'homebrew' my own. With a lazy susan bearing in it so I can swirl the trub off the shoulder into the neck.

Any input?

Where does the airlock go? I sure as hell dont't want to be near a carboy that's generating large amounts of C02 without a pressure release mechanism.

-a,
 
Another weakness to that plan, besides the air lock: The fermented wort may have to pass through all the trub to empty. Unless the bottom also has a drain valve accompanying that airlock on the bottom (or now the top) Still, all the trub would fall back. So, seems any advantage has two major drawbacks.
 
Isn't the point of an inverted carboy is for dumping the trub through the bottom? They have a dump plate on the bottom and a closeable opening on top with airlock etc.
 
Denny's Brew said:
Isn't the point of an inverted carboy is for dumping the trub through the bottom? They have a dump plate on the bottom and a closeable opening on top with airlock etc.
I've seen SS fermenters like that, and I'm sure they work very well; but I've never seen a carboy with a closeable opening and airlock on the bottom (which would become the top when inverted),

-a.
 
ajf said:
I've seen SS fermenters like that, and I'm sure they work very well; but I've never seen a carboy with a closeable opening and airlock on the bottom (which would become the top when inverted),

-a.
I thought he was going to make his own SS carboy. If he's talking about glass then there is an attachment to the neck that holds the liquid in, it has a tube sticking up toward the top ( what is normaly the bottom) that is stuck so that it is just above the trub. That is how you siphon the beer in/out.

Actually two tubes, one just above the trub, the other just above the top of the liquid. The second one is for releasing presure through an airlock and for air intake while siphoning through the other tube.

Never used one, just seen one on a website once.
 
Search feature? What's that?

Yeah, sounds not worth the trouble to save one transfer, pimary to secondary. I just rather avoid complicating a simple thing like a carboy. I mean, gravity holds beer into a carboy, invert it and gravity is no longer your friend...
 
casebrew said:
Search feature? What's that?

don't worry. You didn't even know what to search for :).

When I saw the fermentap system at Morebeer.com, the first thing I did was searching this forum to see if it is any good. That's why I remembered the link.

Kai
 
casebrew said:
Pros and cons of inverted carboys as fermenters? Cost don't count, I'll 'homebrew' my own. With a lazy susan bearing in it so I can swirl the trub off the shoulder into the neck.

Any input?

if you were to 'homebrew' your own, id hope you've got some fabrication skills - and if thats the case you should probably just build yourself a conical fermentor...which is what you're kind of aimed at here.
if you want the advantages of something like this (being able to harvest yeast/dump trub/etc) i dont know why you'd go with a carboy setup instead of going whole hog, i think of it as an all or nothing (but then, thats just my .02)
 
I have read other articles where people have tried it. Most have said that the angle of descent of the cone of a carboy is not sufficient enough to ensure that the trub slides to the bottom. In most cases, it will actually collect and hold on the sides. If you compare a carboy to a conical fermenter, you will see the angle of the fermenter is much steeper.

just my .02
 

Latest posts

Back
Top