Plastic conical FV build - pics

[pantsmachine]

Cracking build. I use a conical almost identical to yours. You will get a condensation build up inside the FV itself but i'm sure that lid will keep it all in. Why do you want to pressure seal the fv? It wasn't designed to? More hassle than its worth IMHO.

I use a low wattage wine heater plate insulated and strapped to the outside of the FV in Winter. I ferment at 13 deg C in the Winter and stop brewing if the garage goes above 20 deg(height of Summer only of course, look at my location).

Two things maybe, Your red frame, does it have the FV sitting directly on the rounded steel edge or are you using the mounting bolt holes on the fv? Just thinking of weight of beer and time combining on the plastic to steel interface.

Make sure your racking valve is tight tight or fit a secondary fixing solution as they do rotate a bit after use over a period of time.

[Kev888]

Thanks for the thoughts!

I'm not really expecting airtight - I think some people ferment or else rack under pressure with stainless conicals but mine wouldn't take anything like that. Its more that the top of the tank is a bit uneven so there are some gaps that could do with just making more dust proof. I did some tests this morning and actually all I may need to do is put a modest weight on the lid and the rim flexes/flattens so it seems to close the gaps up fairly well.

I think your tank must be different to mine, and quite a bit better, as mine doesn't have bolt holes - I'd say it was far too thin to have any really. So yes, its sitting directly on the metal ring instead, it has a small horizontal lip that I'm assuming must be for that purpose:

Another difference of my tank is probably the temperature rating - again perhaps due to being thinner. Its only rated to 55 degrees C so that put me off using a direct heating belt or mat against the plastic, but I ended up using my existing fridge which I already had the pipe heater in anyway so thankfully it hasn't turned out to be a problem..

Thanks also for the heads-up on the racking valve, I'll pay particular attention to it when I do the first trials and see how it goes - I really want it to work after all this!.

Cheers
kev

[pantsmachine]

Nice one, that lip will support it well. Different tanks then. Best things about conicals for me is the simple dumping of trub out the bottom and the harvesting of yeast at the end of the brew. I don't where you stand on racking to another vessel or not. IMHO its not worth the hassle, The facility to bottle or rack to final vessel under header pressure and dumping dross out the bottom of the conical during fermentation negates the need to transfer to secondary. My opinion only of course! When do you see yourself being up and running with a brew? On the valve support mounting. I bottle only, so for example on my last brew there were 120 bottles. That's a lot of on and offs! if you are racking into larger vessels you should be ok.

[Kev888]

Great stuff. Yeah, I don't do the secondary FV any more (unless I run out of cornies) - opinions on that seems to have changed in recent years and its now thought less urgent to get the beer off the yeast than it was when I started brewing. But I would like to keep it clearing in the FV for quite a bit longer than I currently do, so its probably going to be more worthwhile draining the yeast off then.

But mainly the conical is because I'm starting to get into liquid yeasts, and it seems well worth the effort in harvesting and so on. I know there are still reasons to harvest dried yeast but its so cheap and easy to use from the packet that lazybones-here couldn't really be bothered with that. The coinical looks like the best way - though I must admit it seems a lot more money/effort than I'd anticipated for the pleasure, so I hope I'm going to really like using it after all this!

Cheers
Kev

[beermonsta]

Happily my fridge has a collection gulley and drain hole built in to deal with any that dripps off the cooling radiator/plate - it collects in a small moulded dish mounted on the motor, whose heat presumably evaporates it away

Ha ha! so did mine - if you look at the 2nd and 3rd photo you can see the original condensation drip hole (looks like a black dot just above the compressor) - It wont't be there for long!

Got plenty of kingspan now in the brew shed, so tomorrow I'll be collecting the wood to make the frame. I think I'll use my other new(ish) toy - a pocket hole jig to join the frame together. I've not had chance to use it in anger yet!
So what fan are you thinking of Kev? PC fan - but that would be pretty weak and need a 12V power source. I thought about a standard desk fan but not sure it'd be happy on 24/7. I was thinking about one of those fridge fan/motors which are designed to run 24/7. Any other ideas for air circulation?
Ahhh - I just remembered I have a little 100watt element heater that is designed to go in a greenhouse to keep Jack at bay - that might just be my heating source I love it when a plan comes together.

[Kev888]

Ah yes, definately a more radical strip-down than mine then. I've got some old PC fans around so I'll be using that type of thing. I've got some mains versions from old electrical equipment too, but they're not very sealed against water so the low voltage appeals to me - I'll probably just use a cheap wall-wart type of supply for it/them.

I think it should be powerful enough, its really just to stir the air around and make things more even throughout the cupboard- and they certainly push some air about for their size. Also, the heat will rise up to the conical naturally but when it comes to cooling my fridge is low down and the cooled air would tend to collect at the bottom without some circulation; it'd reach the conical eventually but a helping hand wouldn't go amis.

Cheers
Kev

[Kev888]

Made a little progress again this weekend. I made a door and fitted it, and also sealed in the fridge with more celotex, some squirty foam and shiny tape:

I put some thick weatherstrip around the door to help it seal, it claimed to seal 2-10mm gaps, which it does but is challenging to compress it down to 2mm. So i ended up packing out the hinge recesses with card to let the door close more easily.

I came up with a somewhat crude but effective way of keeping the door closed with bungees (though I need to rearrange the screw positions to fit my bungee lengths more usefully). Their springiness seems to work well with the weatherseal, by applying continual pressure as it slowly conforms:


I then filled the conical with water for a test and will leave it for some time to check all is well. I'll only be making 90L batches, which actually gives good but not excessive headroom, however it takes nearly 150L to totally fill the tank so i'll have to devise a cleaning and sanitising regime that doesn't need 150L of chemicals..

Cheers
Kev

[floydmeddler]

A thing of beauty Kev. Well done!

[Kev888]

Thanks! like all of these things its taking more time/effort than I imagined but its getting there - just a fan or two needed now, really.

Cheers
kev

[beermonsta]

I'm a fan Kev!

be-au-t-iful

I'm up to here at the moment ...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39934
bottom of the thread.

Got caught short on Saturday night - right after taking the last photo of frost on the coil My heart decided to start palpitate (for 30 mins) and my pulse went up to 130 bmp so took a 4 hour visit to AnE so get hooked up to an ECG and have blood sucked out of me. Don't worry all seems fine - just work stress me reckons - DON'T BECOME A TEACHER! I felt fine btw, but it was a bit odd that my heart was doing 130 bmp (give or take!) and I was as relaxed as could be!

Sunday I wanted to build the frame/add the kingspan but decide to have a dressing-gown day!!

still thinking about the frost that rapidly builds up on the coils - I think this will need special attention (like me )
Have you considered using magnetic strip eg...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Self-Adhesive-Foa ... 53e6b77ca0
to keep the door closed - just like they use in the real fride doors?

[Kev888]

Thats all looking very advanced compared to mine - you'll have to make a thread of your whole build at some point and bring all the info and pics together.

Sorry to hear about the odd heart rate - hope it was just a one off; the easy day seems like a considerably better idea than wrestling with fridges, under the circumstances! No, I'll never become a teacher; my current job involves ridiculously long hours trying (and generally failing) to manage a bunch of university academics and PhD students, who often seem to act like 13 year olds; if I change it'll not be into anything equally stressful, if I have any choice.

Yes, I did initially intend to use a magnetic strip, or at least a foam strip and separate magnetic catches, but the timber I made the frame and door from was a bit warped even though I tried to find straight bits, so the door didn't turn out to be as snug fitting as i'd hoped. Rather I needed something much more squishy to make up the differences, the 2-8mm range of the weatherstrip was about right for that but it was quite resistant, so in turn I needed something quite beefy to compress it enough to close the door. I can't see anything wrong with the magnetic strip if the door fits closely enough, but it would all have to be much more accurate than mine to get a good seal with foam that thin.

Cheers
kev

[Kev888]

Just an update as the first run of the conical is nearing its end:

The brew (mentioned here) has been in there for about a week now and has pretty much reached FG, although theres still a little activity so it'll be next weekend before I can keg. I've yet to install the fans, but the temperature of the wort is only about 0.5degreesC below the cupbopard's air temperature, which I'm controlling to 20c, so close enough for me!

I measured it earlier in the week, after a day or so of vigorous fermentation, and it was a tad over 1degreesC above the air temperature due to self heating, though I'd anticipated that and had the ATC set to 19c so the end result has been stable enough for me. Its not been as cold as a few weeks ago so its not been a worst-case trial, but the 60W heater has been off as often as on when I checked it, so doesn't seem to be anywhere near its limits.

Just been out and drawn off about 4L of yeast/yeasty-wort from the bottom tap. It worked great - as simple as opening a tap in fact, albeit after sanitising first, so I'm very happy. Clearly some yeast stays stuck to the side, because you can't see the yeast bed sinking as you draw it off, but thats not really a problem, at least you can see how much was there to start with. Now i just have to work out how best to preserve my harvest - John Palmer suggests washing the yeast and then keeping it under boiled/cooled water to encourage it to stay dormant, so I'll probably have a go with that. Exciting times!

Cheers
Kev

[Kev888]

I did a split brew recently, and discovered another benefit of having heated/cooled a cupboard rather than the tank directly - its easy to swap tanks:


And on another note I've discovered a couple of small scratched/defective areas inside the conical, that remain stained after cleaning - I don't recall doing that but I don't actually know for certain that they were already there But not great either way; especially as the temperature rating means I can't sanitise it by filling with boiling water. The tank is too expensive and took too long to make to easily discard, but I suspect its not going to be as long lived as I'd imagined. So I'll also appreciate being able to swap the tank separately to all the heating/cooling gubbins when the time comes for that too.

That said it does actually seems to be working okay so far and I don't regret it as such, just a pity that in hindsight I feel the tank isn't quite in the same league as I chose to make the other parts. As I posted in another thread:

I think if I were to do it again I'd either go cheap and cheerful, using brass and copper and probably a fixed racking tap, to take full advantage of the tank being cheaper than most conical alternatives. Or I'd spend more on a better quality tank (probably stainless or at least higher quality plastic) thats more in keeping with the investment of time and money of the whole project.

Cheers
kev

[Hogarth]

Sorry to hear about your scratches, Kev. I don't know if this is any help, but there's a bit here about using a knife to remove them.

The build looks terrific.

[Kev888]

Hmm, I'll have to inspect the scratches more closely, if they're shallow there may be something I can do. I was wandering about hot water too, if its possible to sanitise effectively without heating/soaking for some time (which is the bit i'm uncertain of) then it may be easy enough to pour a kettle-full over the areas or something.

As a last resort I'll drill them out and bung up with some kind of blanked-off tank connector or flange, that can be removed for cleaning, sooner than throw the whole tank. But it would be nice not to have extra parts to clean.

Thanks!