Questions about living with conicals

[Rad]

I want to move to stainless fermenters in the near future. I would also scale up from 32l batches to 55l. I'd go for 1/2 bbl fv (70ish L to the brim) either from Brewtech or Mr Lard.

I brew outside or in my kitchen depending on the weather. I ferment in my garage. So to transfer the wort I'd have to drag the fv into the garden to wash it. Get it inside. Transfer the wort up into the fv (my kettle in on the floor). Drag the fv across the yard into the garage and lift it up into the fridge.

Doing that with a bucket is annoying. Doing that with fv that will at times weigh almost as much as I do, it's going to be a challenge. How do you find living with conicals? How do you transfer the wort and move them around? Do you have any tips or tricks to make all this easier?

Is a cooling coil a must or will a tall fridge be able to keep the temperature down? 50ish L isn't much but still more than what I'm used to.

Do you use the dump or racking valve to bottle/keg your beer?

[Bigbud78]

My 7 Gal Mr lard conical with butterfly valves weighs a lot without beer in it, I struggle when its got 25L in it.

Mine only just fits in a fridge

https://www.dropbox.com/s/so89z86r9g86z ... 5.jpg?dl=0

[orlando]

I want to move to stainless fermenters in the near future. I would also scale up from 32l batches to 55l. I'd go for 1/2 bbl fv (70ish L to the brim) either from Brewtech or Mr Lard.

I brew outside or in my kitchen depending on the weather. I ferment in my garage. So to transfer the wort I'd have to drag the fv into the garden to wash it. Get it inside. Transfer the wort up into the fv (my kettle in on the floor). Drag the fv across the yard into the garage and lift it up into the fridge.

Doing that with a bucket is annoying. Doing that with fv that will at times weigh almost as much as I do, it's going to be a challenge. How do you find living with conicals? How do you transfer the wort and move them around? Do you have any tips or tricks to make all this easier?

Is a cooling coil a must or will a tall fridge be able to keep the temperature down? 50ish L isn't much but still more than what I'm used to.

Do you use the dump or racking valve to bottle/keg your beer?

Don't envy the problem, I certainly couldn't move mine when its full. Unless you can brew in your garage you are really up against it. You could rack to 5 gallon jerry cans and transport that way but you up the contamination risk. Racking from the FV to a keg can be done by pressurising the FV and transferring via racking arm through the beer out fitting.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

You can use platform trucks to move heavy stuff around, but you wouldn't want a lumpy surface.

Pumps may be your only practical option though. Keep the FV in the same place and move the wort to it

[goldthirst]

You can fit castors to the Brewtech conicals, I believe it's a 3/8" thread.

[Fil]

a small keg or barrel trolley or similar might be a useful addition to the brewery;)

as long as you keep vessels to a size you can lump them about when empty alls well n good, when you start going larger then you want to look at clean in place solutions which can get expensive

[f00b4r]

Given your situation you might also want to consider getting another fermenting fridge in the garage and just splitting any wort into two batches to ferment, it will likely be a much cheaper route, remove a lot of the problems mentioned, give you more flexibility on brew length and would allow you to then experiment a bit more if you wanted at the ferment stage (different yeasts, dry hopping, etc..).

[Rad]

Thanks for the replies. I thought of brewing in the garage before. The only caveat at the moment is the power. A 3kw+ system will blow the fuse. Running a better power line to the garage has just moved up my to do list.

The way I see it, I'll need to wash, sanitise and put the fv back in the chamber before transferring the wort. I do have a lift table so moving the kettle around the yard and the garage won't be a big issue. No way I'll get it into the kitchen. I don't think it'll go high enough so I'd need to put something underneath the kettle to make up the height (or get a pump).

I haven't given up yet but I certainly have a lot more planing to do before I can upgrade.