Starting volume in conical

[Jeremy W]

Hi, getting ready to pull the trigger on a conical fermenter and wanted to know what volume people generally start with if they plan on dumping trub and yeast prior to begging/bottling. For 5 gal going to a keg, do you start with 5.5 gal? 6 gal?

 

[cfrazier77]

For me, 5.25 gallons

 

[DuncB]

Well I have Fermentasaurus 30 litres so about 8 US gallons, I brew this much, some loss with hop drops etc, keg the 20 litres and then the rest I bottle for mobile use / giveaways.

 

[k-daddy]

If just trub & yeast, 5.25 gallons should get you 5 gallons of finished beer. If you're planning to dry hop, you'll likely need 5.5 gallons in the fermenter at the very least. You're going to love the conical... it won't guarantee better beer but you'll have more control of the process. Good luck.

 

[eric19312]

I'd aim for 5.5 gallons if not dry hopping and 6 gallons with reasonable dry hop and more if you are going very heavy on the dry hops. I don't really mind dumping a pint or three on kegging day as insurance that I will package full kegs.

 

[pvpeacock]

5.5 gallons is what I shoot for

 

[Brooothru]

I must be a pretty sloppy brewer. I look to have ~9 gallons/34L at the start of boil. After 75 minutes boiling evaporation and 3-8 oz of hops absorbing wort, I whirlpool and hop stand for about 20 minutes to settle the trub, then chill to 65F/18C and transfer to the fermenter. As long as I'm not pumping trub, my target is 6.3 gallons into the 7 gallon conical with the racking arm turned to the 3 o'clock position to induce a secondary low pressure whirlpool vortex (Northern hemisphere) to help further settle any trub. Then I'll chill the wort to a few degrees below my target yeast pitch temperature for maybe ½ an hour to 45 minutes to let things settle a bit. I'll get a liter or two of settled gunk, then pitch, then oxygenate.

So nominally I'll have a bit over 6 gallons at that point. But, you know, like George Costanza said to Seinfeld, "Shrinkage." Since the yeast have been pitched, I'll drain a liter out the racking or sample port for a fast ferment test sample into the Erlenmeyer flask I used for the starter and set it spinning on the stir plate.

Sometime after the krausen has settled I'll dump another 2-3 liters of trub and hops till I start seeing creamy yeast. Down to about 5.6 gallons at that point. When SG gets to about 5 points of predicted Final Gravity, I'll snag a liter or two of harvested yeast, then spund and eventually cold crash. So when it comes time to transfer to a serving keg I'm left with 5.3~5.5 gallons in the conical, if everything's worked out. The keg gets filled without sucking up any dregs from the cone. After that packaging is complete I'll prime a few swing top bottles with corn sugar and fill a few until the beer starts getting cloudy. The keg goes in the beer fridge to either condition or lager, and the left over bottles are tucked into a warm corner to bottle condition for a few weeks.

The end result is a full keg and a few bottles to sample until the keg finds a slot in the kegerator. I suppose I could tighten up the process a little, but this method gets me a predicable and repeatable volume of beer that I can count on every batch.

 

[DuncB]

with the racking arm turned to the 3 o'clock position to induce a secondary low pressure whirlpool vortex (Northern hemisphere) to help further settle any trub.

Not sure that the Coriolis effect is that significant to your whirlpool on such a small scale and with the whirlpool speeds we use.

 

[Brooothru]

No, generally it's not, and physical containment can have a bearing. But all circumstances being neutral, fluids will drain cyclonically in the north, anticyclonically in the south. I'll wager that most of the drains in your house follow that paradigm, just as major atmospheric pressure systems do on a meso scale. Scale isn't the determining factor, but local conditions or barriers that induce a flow counter to the Coriolis force can be more determative on a smaller scale.. I certainly could easily induce a clockwise rotation by stirring the other way.

 

[DuncB]

Just been and checked, three sinks and they all drain counter clockwise.
Southern hemisphere but we did emigrate from the north so maybe that's why.

 

[Brooothru]

Just been and checked, three sinks and they all drain counter clockwise.
Southern hemisphere but we did emigrate from the north so maybe that's why.

Yikes. You took Coriolis with you???

 

[DuncB]

A container full I expect.

 

[odie]

work backwards from target batch size...add in your average fermenter waste/trub/cake...add in your average kettle trub/waste...add in your average boil off...add in your average grain absorption...etc