I must not have been too naughty this year, because Santa brought me FastFermenter 7.9G Conical. I think my step-son wants me to make him some beer, LOL. He's the one that got me started doing this, and now I've pushed it a lot farther than he ever did with his mate, other than some of their hopping excursions. I'm not quite as crazy about bitter stuff as they are. I was eyeballing his currently unused kegerator in his garage last time I was over there, too.
He works so much he doesn't have much time to spend on it, so I'm thinking maybe I do a keg of his favorite at some time that he can enjoy. He's not real picky, and likes several of the recipes I do, so that makes it easy to appease him.
Gonna do my Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, for the first brew in the FF7.9, selfishly for me, LOL. Unfortunately, I don't have any of it bottled to compare notes, so maybe I get another recipe kit and do one in the buckets as usual so I can tell if the FF7.9 has upped my game a little. Trying to restock my inventory anyway. It'll be interesting to see if I can tell any difference in using a conical versus what I've been doing from the start. This is where I'll have to be VERY precise on gravity, pitch rates, and temperatures so that the only variable will be removal of the trub during ferment. Otherwise, it'll be comparing apples to bananas.
Out of curiosity, has anyone has adapted one of the FastFerment conicals for pressure fermenting? If so, got a list of parts? Just guessing, it isn't going to take much pressure to blow the lid off this thing or make it leak like crazy. I built swimming pools for a living to get through college, and I know the quality of plastic ball valves, and how easy they will start leaking. That makes me ask how much pressure we are talking about usiing spunding techniques versus bottled CO2 techniques, and how it affects various ale styles. I lean toward Belgian and German wheats, and American as well, which tend to be slightly sweeter ales, but throw in a stout once in a while. Still haven't tried a dubble or tripel, but have done one Belgian Strong. Even running 3 weeks minimum on my ferments, I still tend to have high FG's, making for a sweeter beer. Will a conical let me ferment a little longer to possibly make the ales just a little dryer (by getting rid of more of the solids before packaging it)? Would I be better off replacing the lost volume by filling the catch bulb with clean wort to wake the yeast up again toward the end of the ferment? I'm not confused about the primary purpose of a conical, just wondering if anyone has tried different things to experiment with their process like I'm doing for the learning process. I'm getting to the point now that some of my experiments may go horribly awry and make me waste a batch.
Still need to get the lifting sling, a spare catch ball, and maybe the jacket, although an old quilt will serve quite nicely for a jacket. My DIL can probably stitch me up something tailor made. Might be time to start considering an electronic monitor, which will cut out some of the sampling losses. If I go through the trouble to make this stuff, I wanna drink it, not pour a bunch of it down the sink. Next steps will be more temperature control on the fermenting schedule.
I'm keeping the learning curve pointed straight up as much as possible. If I ain't learnin' something, I'm probably sleeping.
