Anvil stainless bucket vs ss brewtech bucket vs brew builder conical.

[pottsworth]

So after a couple of years using my fastferment, and a couple of "carryover" flavours, I'm looking at stainless fermenter, mainly for ease of cleaning, and also lack of porosity.

Does anyone have experience with one or more of the above?

The anvil seems great value for the price, and can take one of the thermowell bungs (I use an inkbird (soon to be upgraded to st1000+) and a brew belt for temp control), so seems like a great budget option.

The ss bucket seems to have a more pronounced cone profile, can be stacked for future use, and has the coolomg lid option.

The brewbuilder is over 50% more once you add wheels and a thermowell, but is a full conical. I don't currently harvest yeast, but it would be nice to have the option in the future. It also has an integrated blow-off barb.

Any advice would be gratefully received!

 

[LeeH]

The full comical has major advantages, if you have the funds and think you are sticking with the hobby I would pony up fir that.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The full comical has major advantages

It's more amusing than the others

 

[jceg316]

I have an SS Brewbucket and I'm very happy with it. I bottle straight from the FV and my beers are coming out very well and "clean" tasting. I would have got this: https://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/fermentation/391-30l-brewdevil-ss-conical-fermenter.html but it wasn't out yet. The FV in the link looks a lot like the Brew Builder one but is ~£100 cheaper IIRC. I might be getting another conical and if I do I'll be buying that.

 

[pottsworth]

I have an SS Brewbucket and I'm very happy with it. I bottle straight from the FV and my beers are coming out very well and "clean" tasting. I would have got this: https://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/fermentation/391-30l-brewdevil-ss-conical-fermenter.html but it wasn't out yet. The FV in the link looks a lot like the Brew Builder one but is ~£100 cheaper IIRC. I might be getting another conical and if I do I'll be buying that.

I was very tempted by one of those too, but I emailed the guy asking if you could replace the thermometer with an inkbird probe, and he said it’s just a surface thermometer, not a thermowell, so you can’t do that.

LeeH - what are the major advantages of a full conical?

 

[jceg316]

I was very tempted by one of those too, but I emailed the guy asking if you could replace the thermometer with an inkbird probe, and he said it’s just a surface thermometer, not a thermowell, so you can’t do that.

LeeH - what are the major advantages of a full conical?

FWIW in my fridge I blue tac the probe to the outside of the FV, temp is only ever a degree out.

 

[IainM]

I got the anvil from BeerHawk back in Novermber with a 20% discount code stacked with some promotional sale price, about £100 if I remember rightly, and I'm about 10 brews in with it. A bargain for a SS fv. It's a basic piece of kit compared to some other brew buckets / conicals, but the simplicity means it's easy to clean, and there is no residual smell or transfer of flavour. The seal is airtight and I've had no leaks from the tap, and it is solidly built. The bottom is conical, but the cone isn't very deep. I like the rotating racking arm, as it makes transferring without disturbing the sediment very easy, so I can get pretty much all the beer out leaving behind only the yeast cake. My only quibble is that it could do with being a couple of litres larger to accommodate 23L batches with true top-cropping yeasts, but you can't complain for the price.

 

[pottsworth]

Yeah, the anvil is very tempting considering it's a decent chunk of the fermenter for a fraction of the price.

Has anyone got any experience with any other stainless fermenters they would recommend?

 

[foxbat]

Yeah, the anvil is very tempting considering it's a decent chunk of the fermenter for a fraction of the price.

Has anyone got any experience with any other stainless fermenters they would recommend?

I've got this Brewbuilder 33l fermenter. It's airtight and there are no threads whatsoever so all you have to clean are flat surfaces. You have to add a set of industry-standard 1.5" tri-clamp fittings to complete the setup. This adds about £50 to the cost if you shop astutely on ebay. If you haven't seen tri-clamp before they are sanitary fittings used in the dairy industry that clamp together and have no threaded joints or other difficult to clean parts. You can see a picture of mine with the fittings attached in this post. With all fittings attached including a blowoff tube on the top port it fits inside my cheap Currys brewfridge.

Here's another photo of it:

 

[uDicko]

That is a thing of beauty

 

[andyb13]

Foxbat, I also have the brewbuilder FV great piece of kit, but what I was interested in was the raising trolley it's on, don't suppose you have a make/ model / link to it do you. thanks