Bottling/Kegging from Stainless Conical Fermenter?

[kevin1911]

Hey all,

I had been using the Catalyst fermenter for the last few years. With the transparent tank, liked that I could see how clear the beer was and whether the yeast was settled before bottling and kegging. I've recently moved to a Brewdevil conical fermenter, and have found my last two brews have been extremely cloudy - turns out the yeast level in the fermenter was above the rotary arm of the mini valve tap, so every bottle and keg I filled would have had a hefty amount of trub/yeast/gunk in it along with the beer.

I guess the trick here is to drain off enough of the gunk from the drain valve at the lowest point of the conical before bottling/kegging from the mini valve tap. But how do you know how much to drain off to minimise wasted beer? Or is it better to actually bottle/keg from the main draining valve by draining all the gunk and only when it starts flowing clear, put it into bottles/kegs?

What do you guys/gals do?

I'd appreciate all tips!

Kevin

 

[JonBrew]

I don't have the same FV as you but I do have the very similar ss brewtech brew bucket (difference being it doesn't have the trub dump bottom valve). I stopped using the rotating racking arm because I always found the trub level was lower than the racking port. The fact that you have trub sitting higher than the upper reach of the racking arm seems a bit strange. Are you adding loads of dry hops? In any event, using the trub dump functionality would seem like the obvious solution. Either that of take steps to limit the amount of hot and cold break material that you're carrying over from the boil kettle to you FV.