Plastic 120L conical

[BrewStew]

on a side note, did you guys take a look at his metal wire reinforced pvc tubing? i'm using nylon braided at the moment and they keep collapsing where the bends are when i'm running hot sparge water through them.

not a bad price either! :thumb:

 

[Vossy1]

on a side note, did you guys take a look at his metal wire reinforced pvc tubing?

I use this stuff , well worth thinking about if you order from the states.
I tried PVC for ages it kept collapsing on me and I didn't like the way it went so soft at hot temps (not the wire reinforced stuff though).

 

[BrewStew]

right.. i'm thinking about a rubber seal for the lid. what type of rubber would be best? solid? sponge? i've no idea what are best suited :wha:

found a place that do one off manufacturing... gunna ask for a quote for a 160mm diameter inner hole, 200mm OD and about 5mm thick i think is a fair guestimate to get a rough idea of cost :thumb:

 

[BrewStew]

i just had a really cool idea!

i was thinking of the process i'd use to clean and sanitise the whole thing prior to filling it with wort and the limitations with my current equipment.

i dont want to have to buy another pump when i can use the same one to pump the sanitiser to clean the fermenter and fill it.

so here's my thinking:

the chiller will be the rod style both vossy and Rab have posted. mounted permanently into the fermenter. i'd like it to be permanent because i'm pretty sure getting the chilling line free of air so the pump works after disconnecting it will be a royal PITA. but it should be easily sanitised, and not get in the way of a CIP system, and not position it to prevent the spray from reaching the walls of the fermenter... so i thought mounting it vertically from the top is out. doing as userdeleted suggested (mounting it horizontally through a side wall) is definitely good advice.

so then i though about the CIP (clean in place) system. ie, the "fogger" or a spray ball and how i'll be filling the fermenter. i thought i could mount a hose to the lid, with a screw on connector on the inside of the lid.. the hose will be permanently fixed, but inside, i can attach a fogger/spray ball for sanitising... so here's the process i was thinking of.

1) when my brew comes to an end and it's time to use my immersion chiller... hook the outlet of the immersion chiller up to the hose that goes to the fermenter. using the hot water from the chiller to part fill the conical.
2) add videne or whatever to solution in the conical
3) disconnect the chiller from the fermenter hose, and send the chiller outlet to the water butt (i dont like wasting water)
4) connect the fermenter hose to the outlet of my pump
5) connect the bottom valve on the fermenter to the inlet of my pump
6) attach spray ball/fogger to the screw attachment on the inside of the lid
7) recirculate the sanitiser fluid for a few mins.
8) disconnect the hose from the bottom valve on the conical (which is on the inlet to the pump) and connect it to the outlet of my boiler
9) dump the sanitiser from the conical
10) take off the fogger from the attachment on the inside of the lid
11) pump wort from the boiler across the already sanitised hoses and pump to the conical
12) disconnect the hose on the conical at the pump end, and submerse in a sanitised bottle/cup... whatever
13) add yeast, and finished

so basically in a nutshell, by sanitising the conical, i'm also sanitising the lines that will carry the wort from the boiler into the conical... i'm also santising what will become at the end of the process, the blow off tube!!! a three in one purpose hose attached to the lid which saves me water and sanitiser :thumb:

 

[Rabmaxwell]

These look good Brewstew http://xrl.us/bedcbw but rather pricey. :) :twisted:

 

[BrewStew]

jesus that's alot for a ball valve with a bent pipe!!

 

[jamesb]

jesus that's alot for a ball valve with a bent pipe!!

It's not too bad if you consider the cost of the extra fittings compared to the price of a normal SS ball valve.

I wouldn't pay it though!

 

[Vossy1]

It's not too bad if you consider the cost of the extra fittings compared to the price of a normal SS ball valve

Where are you shopping :shock: . a one piece ss ball valve is about £8, the fittings wouldn't be much more

Stew, something to consider. If I were buying that conical, I'd be sorely tempted to cut a new hole in the top, to your spec. You could then get a ss disc cut as a lid, slightly larger than the hole, and have an o-ring to seal it to the conicals top. Any fitting could be attached to the lid...it would save messing about with that tiny inspection hatch.

I feel a little how to coming on when I have some space to store a conical :lol:

 

[BrewStew]

i thought about that.

but i didn't fancy my DIY skills against a £100 conical :lol:

i reckon if a CIP system works, the small hatch will be irrelevant :thumb:

 

[Rabmaxwell]

You could have your CIP permanently inside by means off a tank fitting & it could double as your blow-off also.

 

[BrewStew]

just thinking... would passing wort through a CIP spray ball help airation?

cos my plan was to just detach the sprayball/fogger from the inside of the lid when adding wort, and leave the hole as a blow off tube exactly as you said rab :thumb:

 

[UserDeleted]

I'm with Vossy on this, it is plastic after all and cutting a hole in plastic is fairly simple . . . FYI I noticed that my local t*scos extra are selling stainless steel serving trays that would serve as an idea lid. . . . . I'm not that sure why you would want a blow off tube, once you have a decent yeast head remove the lid and open ferment . . . we have found that the right time to remove the lid is to wait until the yeast is escaping the FV, then remove the lid . . . and skim . . . when the yeast head starts to fall . . . put the lid back on..

Unless you have inline injection of air/O2 ont he Kettle to FV transfer simply spraying the wort from a pipe into an angled plate will get an awful lot of oxygen into the wort something like

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[BrewStew]

that's not a bad plan.

i could always pick up a cheap air compressor and stick a hepa filter on it... and have that blow into a tee joint near the outlet of the pipe where the wort will fall. someone else on here uses something similar and it makes the wort come out like cream

 

[BrewStew]

can someone tell me what part's i'm looking at to make this?

this looks simple enough to me, where i just rotate the ball valve which rotates the racking arm. seems cheap, but functional :thumb:

 

[Vossy1]

Why would you need that with a conical. I thought part of the appeal of a conical, was being able to dump the yeast off before racking :hmm:

 

[BrewStew]

because when dumping from the bottom valve you get sediment... even when you've dumped trub. a racking arm takes the clear wort from the cone.

if you were to rack from the bottom valve you'd catch some sediment as it slips down the cone.

or so i've been led to believe while reading about it at work when i should've been working :lol:

 

[Vossy1]

I understand how they work. At no point have you said you were thinking of fitting a second ball valve, that's what has thrown me.

if you were to rack from the bottom valve you'd catch some sediment as it slips down the cone.

I don't think that really matters as long as it's not too much.
I gave you the BES stainless linky last night...can't you be arsed to find the fittings :lol: ...pulls tongue...I'll have a look

 

[BrewStew]

it was an afterthought TBH... if i'm going to modify the plastic conical, i think i may aswell grab myself a rotational racking arm.

as i said on the phone last night mate, the BES catalogue confuses the feck outta me i'm no plumber :lol:

 

[Jonnyv]

the BES catalogue confuses the feck outta me i'm no plumber :lol:

You're not the only one

 

[Vossy1]

BES item numbers

£13.94.......10397 Ball valve
£ 2.35 .......14558 Hose tail adpapter
£10.21......14054 1/2 male to 10mm compression male stud coupling (should have a long enough thread area and also has a blank area on the thread where the o-rings can sit.

All plus vat, I reckon you could make it for about £40.

You'd need 2 M22 stainless washers, see my 'how to' boiler thread for them, and you'll need an o-ring to seal the ball valve to the washer. The o-rings that seal to the conical...I have no idea, but a web search will throw loads up.
Stainless tube is a RPITA to bend so you might be better buying a 3/8th stainless racking cane from the Hop and Grape, and cutting it down to suit.