Grainfather Connical Fermentor

[Iantheyounger]

Hi All

I am eyeing up the new Grainfather Connical Fermentor but need some advice. It is insulated and they state the outside temperature will not effect the temperature within the Fermentor. Has anyone any experience of similar insulated Fermentors and whether this works as well as they claim?

I can't afford the cooling unit and my garage gets full sun most of the day so it can get pretty warm in the summer.

My alternative would be to stick with the old plastic bucket and buy a chest freezer instead but not quite so sexy a solution!

Would welcome any thoughts.

Ian

[Fil]

hi Ian, Ive not seen one first hand but have looked at the subject and own an unjacketed ss conical, (yes late night post sampling session shopping spree gulp)

On paper it certainly ticks all the boxes, however i suspect there are more than a few obvious corners cut.

firstly its 'jacket' is a composite of insulation and cooling/hex band, and secondly i dont think its going to be made from the same quality of 1-1.5mm thick SS that the pre grainfather conical offerings provide, mine even arrived with stamped certification of the batch of SS it came from from the foundry..

But are either of those points show stoppers? well I dont think so, as long as the SS is Good enough to be food grade.. and if the temp control system works who cares if its 1/2 n 1/2

The 'unique' and at an extra cost drain valve is an unknown?

As for using one without chilling, That might be a show stopper, But you might be able to freecycle gumtree ebay an expub shelf chiller (loads have been skipped with pub closures, some rescued..) get one with a 'python' or re-circulation pump intended to chill beer engine jackets and cold larger fonts and use that to move the 0c contents of its water bath round the grainfather conicals cooling band i did in a recent post suggest buying an ebay bargain £20 shelf chiller but that was picked up on and after checking they no longer seem to go for those prices unfortunatly .. in my defence i did buy an ebay chiller for £20 if you forget the best part of the day and tank of fuel spent chasing up the M1 to pick it up...

[dbambrick996]

I have seen the fermenter and chiller in the flesh and they are top grade. The bonus for me is that The glycol chiller can be used on 4 fermenters.

The down side for me is the cost, I couldn't justify spending that amount of cash.

A better option for me is a larder fridge and a brewbuilder conical.

If space is an issue and you want to control temps on a number of different batches at the same time and money is not a factor then the gf is a great setup.

The first hack for the gf fermenter will be a diy chiller of some sort.

[chris2012]

Out of interest, how does a single chiller work with multiple fermenters. Is it able to regulate the temp of each separately somehow?

[dbambrick996]

yes. there are 4 separate cool ports out of the glycol unit, the fermenter has the temp control unit, so if you have 4 fermenters you can dial in 4 different temps

[Kev888]

Technically, the ambient temperature will affect the wort within the fermenter, because the insulation is not perfect - however, it will not affect it very much. This means the cooling system should easily keep the wort quite stable even in warm conditions. Of course, the insulation also reduces desirable loss of heat (generated by the fermentation) to the environment, but the cooling/recirc system will again make up for that. Depending on how good the insulation is, some form of warming may be needed to achieve the same in very cool ambient temperatures.

The conical isn't particularly cheap as these things go, so needs to be very good IMO if it is to be fair value for money - I've not seen one myself though, so can't really judge if it is or isn't. Coming from a world in which second hand £60 shelf coolers are often DIY'd to provide the coolant, the chiller in particular is inevitably going to seem 'very' costly too, but I suppose if you wanted a new, ready made solution for multiple FVs then there aren't many competitors.

As always, I'd suggest making sure that you will actually benefit from a conical, in return for the extra expense and size/height. That may sound obvious, but it isn't completely unknown for people to buy conicals because they seem to be the thing to have, and later find they still only use them like flat-bottomed fermenters.

[chris2012]

Wow that's awesome, I didn't know it'd be possible to control 4 separately, I'm curious how that works if it uses a single compressor

"Allows you to cold crash 23 L of wort to as low as 4ºC" i'm suprised with glycol you can't get cooler than that, Im pretty sure just with my maxi + water, I've got to 4C

Unless it uses peltiers?

Edit: I see how it works I think reading - http://www.brewstore.co.uk/media/brewst ... stions.pdf

It sound like the glycol is all the same temp, but then heat is applied at the fermenter.

[Kev888]

With one cool bath, you can either use additional pumps or else use the same pump plus some valves to send coolant to the FVs in turn (they change only very slowly, so breaks in service don't have much impact). I'd assume the GF cooler does one of these, but i don't know for certain.

[chris2012]

Ah yeah that's a good point!

[Iantheyounger]

Thanks everyone for your responses on this.

Ian