Keg King's Round Table

[Chippy_Tea]

Posts removed -

Two Admins and four moderators came to the decision not to close or deleted this thread and that decision is not going to change.

I have removed several negative posts this morning about that decision, this is not up for debate if you do not like what has been posted don't read any future posts and do not post in the thread unless it a genuine question.

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[CEO Keg King]

Let’s get back then to what this was to be about.

One of the things that often comes up is the longevity of the PET tanks. When they are manufactured we date stamp them so that after two years of service you know when to check them. You can do a hydro static test and if it passes then just keep using and retest again in 12 months time. If however you decide its time to replace the tank then what to do with the old one. It exercised our minds for a bit and to discard it is not exactly environmentally friendly. Its still a useful vessel but not to be used under pressure if not tested. It might have a scratch or two which could harbour bacteria.

We thought about it and came up with the idea of turning it into a storage vessel for grain. So when you buy a new tank we package it up with a plastic dispensing valve that fits in place of the butterfly or other valve. The tank price is quite low but I will need to check what it can be offered for in the UK. Keeping it environmentally friendly any of the seconds from the manufacturing plant are made into what we then call the “Grainary” and are not wasted. Both 35 and 60 litre are available. The 60 litre version hold about 32Kg of grain and the 35 litre around 21Kg. LHBSs are buying them to use in their grain rooms to let brewers come in and select their recipes. We also have low cost scales available for easy measuring. The valve will let you get it right to the gram.

This gives the brewer a vessel that keeps the cherished grain out of the mouths of rodents and makes a great display in a brewer’s den.

 

[AdeDunn]

Cool idea shipping the grainary lid with replacement tanks, in a world where single use plastics are a problem especially. I've literally only just started using my gen 1 (yeah, I know, but had to take a break from brewing right after buying it due to health problems) so it's still in like new condition, plus I ferment with an airlock.... But, it would be reassuring to know that when the time comes to replace the tank on it (scratches etc) I could put the old one to use (I buy my grain in 10kilo quantities now, as this allows me to keep more variety of base malt to hand, and experiment more). Like a lot of other folks, I use a 60 litre UN approved blue plastic food storage barrel at the moment. Got 2 in fact, 1 for my malt, 1 for my wife to store flour in.... She makes dog biscuits with my spent grain, so gets through a lot of plain flour... lol

 

[CEO Keg King]

Obviously the dog must like the biscuit. Cannot get our dog to touch any sort of biscuit - ever. Will lap up some beer though.

 

[AdeDunn]

Obviously the dog must like the biscuit. Cannot get our dog to touch any sort of biscuit - ever. Will lap up some beer though.

We have 3 Patterdale terriers, and they absolutely adore them! They won't eat commercial dog biscuits anymore in fact. I often skim the protein off when the wort first reaches the boil and give them that too, before I add any hops, they love it. I let it cool before they get it obviously.

 

[CEO Keg King]

We have 3 Patterdale terriers, and they absolutely adore them! They won't eat commercial dog biscuits anymore in fact. I often skim the protein off when the wort first reaches the boil and give them that too, before I add any hops, they love it. I let it cool before they get it obviously.

What a great way to use the spent grain.

 

[CEO Keg King]

Well we are in the second week of a stage 4 lockdown with nightly curfews and most businesses shut. So time to talk a bit more about our fermenters and where we are heading with temperature control. Obviously when it comes to fermenting there are quite a few variables but one is extremely important to get yeast doing what we want and that is temperature. If we can get the yeast to work at its optimum until we get to the end of fermentation then we are going to get a good product. This is especially the case with lagers and their ilk.

Once the fermentation is over we then want to be able to cold crash in a gentle manner to let things settle out and end up hopefully with a nice clear beer. Home brewers have come up with varying ways to do it over the years and especially in warmer climates had little choice but to shell out for a fridge to do this properly. One of our earlier ideas was to use a plastic mat around the fermentasaurus through which a liquid such as water or water mixed with glycol could be circulated. Whilst it worked there was a lot of effort involved in putting the mat on, avoiding leaks and we were a bit unsure of the longevity of the mat. In the end we decided to go with an internal stainless steel tube looped a few times vertically so as to minimise the places where trub etc could potentially settle. This proved quite successful and drill holes were added to our gen 3 lid designs so that one could easily retrofit these coils. They were offset in order to still let the pickup tube travel vertically in the centre of the vessels.

Now we were able to use a high efficiency jacket to have a nicely enclosed fermenter (keeping light away from the beer) with a cooling/heating coil inside the wort. So with an appropriate cooling/heating unit we can achieve excellent temperature control by using the thermowell for the temperature probe right in the middle of the liquid. So the fridge stays free but now we come to the next item needed which is something to heat and cool the brew. Some people already have chillers and heat mats and they happily put these together with a temp controller. For the rest we have a couple of new products about to come out which we call the Thermentor King and the Thermentor King Max. The basic Thermentor King is a self contained unit which provides both heating and cooling and is not much bigger than a shoebox. It makes about as much noise as a PC and it runs from 12 volts. So you can take this thing camping if you want. For the home use we offer an appropriate power pack. It comes fitted with a couple of ball lock posts so its easy to attach some plastic tubing to go to the cooling coil on top of the Fermenter King. Ideally to minimise losses we suggest putting those tubes inside some air con flexible insulating tube which you can get a a hardware store. With a 35 litre system we were able to get a 20 degree C differential from the ambient to the liquid. So on a 25 degree day it will take the beer down to 5 degrees which is just about drinkable temp.

The Thermentor King max is a higher performance unit which will give a greater temperature differential and on a 30 degree day was able to actually make a fair bit of ice in a 35 litre unit. It also runs off 12 volts and is slightly noisier than the base unit. I will have more information to add tomorrow. The switch between heating and cooling is automatic so you just set the temperature that you need and leave it do its thing.

 

[CEO Keg King]

Some extra pics. You can see the ice.

 

[chillipickle]

Did you ever make the gen3 lid for the snub nose?
Certainly would be nice for dry hopping through.

 

[CEO Keg King]

Did you ever make the gen3 lid for the snub nose?
Certainly would be nice for dry hopping through.

Yes the lid for the gen 3 fits the Snub nose unit also. Its got the dry hopping port underneath the PRV, Will post a pic tomorrow

 

[foxy]

Another way to dry hop, if finances allow, is buy two units, put the dry hops in the second unit.
Use the venting CO2 from the fermenting wort to purge the second unit and transfer from primary to secondary after 3 or 4 days. If you are going to keg purge that at the same time.

 

[AdeDunn]

If the price point of the Thermentor King once it reaches the UK is lower than the cost of setting up a ferm fridge, I may well be very interested. I'm seriously limited for space (my wife nicked more space during the lockdown here when we ended up with a 2nd fridge-freezer for food, but on the plus size she stopped complaining about me using a draw for hops.... lol), the con would be been limited to only using it with FK fermentors (I use a 30L Speidel too as it's just such a good FV). Oh, the as loud as a PC, well my PC has 5 120mm case fans set on a fan curve that ramps up when the CPU and GPU are under load, it can get pretty loud (I wear a headset when gaming), so should I assume you mean an idling PC with only a couple of fans?

@foxy , ahh to have the space to have an FV sat empty waiting for me to dry hop in it..... If I make a space, my wife fills it, she always asks first, but I don't have the heart to say no...

 

[foxy]

If the price point of the Thermentor King once it reaches the UK is lower than the cost of setting up a ferm fridge, I may well be very interested. I'm seriously limited for space (my wife nicked more space during the lockdown here when we ended up with a 2nd fridge-freezer for food, but on the plus size she stopped complaining about me using a draw for hops.... lol), the con would be been limited to only using it with FK fermentors (I use a 30L Speidel too as it's just such a good FV). Oh, the as loud as a PC, well my PC has 5 120mm case fans set on a fan curve that ramps up when the CPU and GPU are under load, it can get pretty loud (I wear a headset when gaming), so should I assume you mean an idling PC with only a couple of fans?

@foxy , ahh to have the space to have an FV sat empty waiting for me to dry hop in it..... If I make a space, my wife fills it, she always asks first, but I don't have the heart to say no...

If the Thermenter King arrives on your shores and you get one, patch that insulating jacket and I noticed you had the old style Fermenter stand which ripped the jacket, you can get plastic end caps to fit over those protruding lugs. Save any more damage to the jacket

 

[jceg316]

Well we are in the second week of a stage 4 lockdown with nightly curfews and most businesses shut. So time to talk a bit more about our fermenters and where we are heading with temperature control. Obviously when it comes to fermenting there are quite a few variables but one is extremely important to get yeast doing what we want and that is temperature. If we can get the yeast to work at its optimum until we get to the end of fermentation then we are going to get a good product. This is especially the case with lagers and their ilk.

Once the fermentation is over we then want to be able to cold crash in a gentle manner to let things settle out and end up hopefully with a nice clear beer. Home brewers have come up with varying ways to do it over the years and especially in warmer climates had little choice but to shell out for a fridge to do this properly. One of our earlier ideas was to use a plastic mat around the fermentasaurus through which a liquid such as water or water mixed with glycol could be circulated. Whilst it worked there was a lot of effort involved in putting the mat on, avoiding leaks and we were a bit unsure of the longevity of the mat. In the end we decided to go with an internal stainless steel tube looped a few times vertically so as to minimise the places where trub etc could potentially settle. This proved quite successful and drill holes were added to our gen 3 lid designs so that one could easily retrofit these coils. They were offset in order to still let the pickup tube travel vertically in the centre of the vessels.

Now we were able to use a high efficiency jacket to have a nicely enclosed fermenter (keeping light away from the beer) with a cooling/heating coil inside the wort. So with an appropriate cooling/heating unit we can achieve excellent temperature control by using the thermowell for the temperature probe right in the middle of the liquid. So the fridge stays free but now we come to the next item needed which is something to heat and cool the brew. Some people already have chillers and heat mats and they happily put these together with a temp controller. For the rest we have a couple of new products about to come out which we call the Thermentor King and the Thermentor King Max. The basic Thermentor King is a self contained unit which provides both heating and cooling and is not much bigger than a shoebox. It makes about as much noise as a PC and it runs from 12 volts. So you can take this thing camping if you want. For the home use we offer an appropriate power pack. It comes fitted with a couple of ball lock posts so its easy to attach some plastic tubing to go to the cooling coil on top of the Fermenter King. Ideally to minimise losses we suggest putting those tubes inside some air con flexible insulating tube which you can get a a hardware store. With a 35 litre system we were able to get a 20 degree C differential from the ambient to the liquid. So on a 25 degree day it will take the beer down to 5 degrees which is just about drinkable temp.

The Thermentor King max is a higher performance unit which will give a greater temperature differential and on a 30 degree day was able to actually make a fair bit of ice in a 35 litre unit. It also runs off 12 volts and is slightly noisier than the base unit. I will have more information to add tomorrow. The switch between heating and cooling is automatic so you just set the temperature that you need and leave it do its thing.

It does heating and cooling which sounds good. The issue I have where I brew is quite big temperature swings between day and night, so it would be good to have something which could keep a constant temperature. I mostly ferment kveik, would it be able to hold 35c for a number of days? How many fermenters can one unit support?

Thanks.

 

[AdeDunn]

If the Thermenter King arrives on your shores and you get one, patch that insulating jacket and I noticed you had the old style Fermenter stand which ripped the jacket, you can get plastic end caps to fit over those protruding lugs. Save any more damage to the jacket

If I was buying one of them, I doubt I'd be using my old gen 1, would make more sense to get a newer gen 3 once they are over here too, with the lid designed to take the fittings. Otherwise it's a lot of DIY.

 

[BlackRegent]

@CEO Keg King
Can you talk me through how the dry hop port works on the gen 3 lid? I currently have a snub nose and dry hopping is a relatively painless experience so long as you're careful releasing the pressure before removing the lid. So I'm considering whether a gen 3 lid is worth the investment. Thanks

 

[Brew_DD2]

We have 3 Patterdale terriers, and they absolutely adore them! They won't eat commercial dog biscuits anymore in fact. I often skim the protein off when the wort first reaches the boil and give them that too, before I add any hops, they love it. I let it cool before they get it obviously.

3?! I have one and he's batshit crazy.

 

[chillipickle]

Snap i have 1 chocolate 8 month old and she is absolutley nuts, in a good way....3 oh no lol.

 

[AdeDunn]

They calm down when you have more than 1 as they burn their excess energy off playing with each other. Having 1 was where you went wrong.

 

[chillipickle]

Always kept 2 or more dogs, but losing my best 2 friends within a month of each other at christmas, trying to keep just 1....for now.
Sorry for off topic.