Bottle conditioning out of a conical
Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:16 pm
I'm considering buying a conical fermenter, or maybe some other larger-scale fermenter. Right now I brew on a 30gal system which spits out enough beer to fill up three 6.5gal buckets* nearly to the top (usually about 17 gallons ends up in bottles after losses). I like this system because splitting the batch three ways gets me a chance to experiment with yeasts and secondaries and stuff. I also only bottle-condition, there's no kegging in my future (kegs are just too expensive these days and I really prefer my beer in a bottle for portability). Transferring from the bucket to a bottling bucket makes life easy.
All that said, a brewhemoth would be pretty friggin' sweet right now, and there's a chance I'll be able to afford one sometime in the upcoming year.
Do any of you bottle condition from a conical? I'm thinking about a couple of different options.
I am assuming whichever conical I buy will be able to withstand enough pressure that I can use CO2 to push the finished beer out of it. So I can drop the yeast and trub, then push the beer. I might be able to mix in the priming sugar at this point, directly into the conical. Then using the same CO2 to push into bottles, I could just bottle directly from there. Alternatively, I just push 5 gallons at a time into the same bottling bucket, adding priming sugar as I go, bottle from the bucket, and repeat.
In-line priming injectors seem like they should exist, but my research indicates they're more of a commercial-grade thing, I haven't been able to find anything on the cheap. That'd be pretty perfect, really- something like a Blichmann beer gun, but instead of a gas and beer line, there's a priming solution and beer line. I pull one trigger and it shoots out a measured amount of priming sugar solution followed by the regular beer, getting pushed at +3psi or whatever out of the conical.
Anyway, anyone have any experience with this stuff? Should I just bite the bullet and buy a few used 15 gallon kegs, carbonate there and use a beer gun to bottle?
*footnote- I do have some carboys, glass and plastic, that I use on occasion for various reasons. Buckets make it a lot easier to dryhop and/or harvest yeast for me.
All that said, a brewhemoth would be pretty friggin' sweet right now, and there's a chance I'll be able to afford one sometime in the upcoming year.
Do any of you bottle condition from a conical? I'm thinking about a couple of different options.
I am assuming whichever conical I buy will be able to withstand enough pressure that I can use CO2 to push the finished beer out of it. So I can drop the yeast and trub, then push the beer. I might be able to mix in the priming sugar at this point, directly into the conical. Then using the same CO2 to push into bottles, I could just bottle directly from there. Alternatively, I just push 5 gallons at a time into the same bottling bucket, adding priming sugar as I go, bottle from the bucket, and repeat.
In-line priming injectors seem like they should exist, but my research indicates they're more of a commercial-grade thing, I haven't been able to find anything on the cheap. That'd be pretty perfect, really- something like a Blichmann beer gun, but instead of a gas and beer line, there's a priming solution and beer line. I pull one trigger and it shoots out a measured amount of priming sugar solution followed by the regular beer, getting pushed at +3psi or whatever out of the conical.
Anyway, anyone have any experience with this stuff? Should I just bite the bullet and buy a few used 15 gallon kegs, carbonate there and use a beer gun to bottle?
*footnote- I do have some carboys, glass and plastic, that I use on occasion for various reasons. Buckets make it a lot easier to dryhop and/or harvest yeast for me.