Small 15/30L conical Fermeters - Brewdevil / Klarstein etc Real Life Experiance

[pommybitter]

Does anyone have any of the Stainless Steel Conicals (15/30L) that all seem to be made by the same company and re-branded either Brewdevil / Klarstein etc etc and can give me a feedback on the unit in regard to harvesting and or dropping yeast out?

My concern is based around the angle of the cone! It looks quite shallow compared to commercial conicals. I'm concerned that the yeast will not flow out of the yeast dump port on the bottom because of this shallow angle if anyone has one and can easilly dump yeast I'd love to hear your experiances.

30L BrewDevil SS Conical Fermenter

 

[Agentgonzo]

I have the 30L one and love it. I've never dumped the yeast though, but here is my experience with regards to the cone.

The yeast drops out into the cone fine, but it doesn't form a cake with a flat top. Instead, the yeast cake is lower in the middle than around the edges (as I've seen after racking off), presumably because of the shallower cone. I would expect that if you tried to dump the yeast out from underneath the beer, you would probably get around half the yeast out before the beer started to gush out.

If your plan is to just harvest some yeast, that would work, but if you want to drop all the yeast out and leave the beer to brighten without sitting on the yeast (if that has any effect?) then I don't think it would be great at it.

Personally, I leave it on the yeast until it's fermented and cleared, then bottle straight from the tap. The tap level is pretty good in that it's just above the level of the yeast and you have a rotating arm to set the level at which you draw the beer off... So that you don't pick up any yeast but you get (almost) all of the beer out. I normally lose about a pint left on the yeast because it's under the level of the arm/tap.

I dump all my yeast down the drain. So then just wash out the fermenter and use the bottom drain valve to empty it into the sink, which is very easy.

It's worth noting that (at least when I bought mine) it was called a drain valve, not a dump valve, so presumably intended for cleaning rather than harvesting yeast.