Fruit flies. I HATE fruit flies.

[JonGoku]

Yes you can. The bottom of the cone has threads on it. BrianC uses one of these and if he ever figures out how to post pictures, we might get to see it.

I'd like to see it too. I was actually looking at the picture of his setup and saw these just out of the picture frame...

[backyard brewer]

How about a Sanke? It's a tad small for a full 15G batch, but they make great fermenters. You can stretch a carboy cap over them. I'm going to play around with making a tri-clover fitting to convert them, but I haven't got to it yet. You can sanitize them by boiling a little water in them and letting the steam do the rest.

I just ordered the material to prototype a cap i've been thinking about for a while. It'll be a sanke fermenter conversion kit. The kit will consist of a 2" tri clover cap, gasket, racking cane/arm, thermowell and blow-off port. The thermowell will be welded into the cap. The blow-off port will be a 1/2" fpt coupler welded on and the racking arm will be adjustable through a welded on 3/8" compression adapter. You'll be able to slide the racking cane vertically to rack sediment free.

Should have a prototype next week some time.

[JonGoku]

How about a Sanke? It's a tad small for a full 15G batch, but they make great fermenters. You can stretch a carboy cap over them. I'm going to play around with making a tri-clover fitting to convert them, but I haven't got to it yet. You can sanitize them by boiling a little water in them and letting the steam do the rest.

I just ordered the material to prototype a cap i've been thinking about for a while. It'll be a sanke fermenter conversion kit. The kit will consist of a 2" tri clover cap, gasket, racking cane/arm, thermowell and blow-off port. The thermowell will be welded into the cap. The blow-off port will be a 1/2" fpt coupler welded on and the racking arm will be adjustable through a welded on 3/8" compression adapter. You'll be able to slide the racking cane vertically to rack sediment free.

Should have a prototype next week some time.

That sounds really neat. You have a cost estimate yet? Any plans on quitting the day job to do only stirplates.com? If it works, you better patent it and be ready to have orders out your ears.

[backyard brewer]

That sounds really neat. You have a cost estimate yet? Any plans on quitting the day job to do only stirplates.com? If it works, you better patent it and be ready to have orders out your ears.

No estimate yet, it'll depend on how hard it is to weld the thermowell tube in and I don't have a total for the material cost yet. I'm shooting for under $80 for the whole thing, minus a keg of course.

I'd love for stirplates to get big enough to replace my day job, but I don't see that ever happening.

[JonGoku]

That sounds really neat. You have a cost estimate yet? Any plans on quitting the day job to do only stirplates.com? If it works, you better patent it and be ready to have orders out your ears.

No estimate yet, it'll depend on how hard it is to weld the thermowell tube in and I don't have a total for the material cost yet. I'm shooting for under $80 for the whole thing, minus a keg of course.

I'd love for stirplates to get big enough to replace my day job, but I don't see that ever happening.

Hmm, well at around $80 I wouldn't see people lining up by the masses. I'd guess you'd need to get it down to the $30-50 range to really get it going, but then hrm, welding could be a lot of work. Best of luck!

[backyard brewer]

I guess time will tell. It would sure be nice to be able to do it for $30 -$50 but there will probably be that much in stainless steel material costs alone. Factor in electricity, argon and the machining I have to have done outside; it all adds up fast.

[JonGoku]

Yeah, I understand. I just think it's cool that you're doing these things. Keep up the good work!

[brahn]

Cool idea Derrin. What I'd really be interested in is a jacketed version ...

[backyard brewer]

Cool idea Derrin. What I'd really be interested in is a jacketed version ...

lol! It'd be pretty easy to jacket a sanke with a copper coil like I did my conicals. The cost of copper has come way down to. ICS has a 1/2" X 50' copper coil for about $35 I think it is now.

[maltbarley]

That sounds really neat. You have a cost estimate yet? Any plans on quitting the day job to do only stirplates.com? If it works, you better patent it and be ready to have orders out your ears.

No estimate yet, it'll depend on how hard it is to weld the thermowell tube in and I don't have a total for the material cost yet. I'm shooting for under $80 for the whole thing, minus a keg of course.

I'd love for stirplates to get big enough to replace my day job, but I don't see that ever happening.

Hmm, well at around $80 I wouldn't see people lining up by the masses. I'd guess you'd need to get it down to the $30-50 range to really get it going, but then hrm, welding could be a lot of work. Best of luck!

If you consider other stainless fermenting options, $80 plus the cost of a keg is rather inexpensive.

[backyard brewer]

I just foud out St Pat's has the same basic thing already. They have a clover connect on the blow-off port which I think is a waste since the other side is just a barb fitting anyway. Why bother with all the extra material to use a clover to hook a vinyl hose to a 3/8" tube??

Anyway, they sell their kit for $130, so I guess Jon REALLY won't be buying one of those!

I have the material being machined right now. I hope to weld up the protoypes next week. My plan right now is a 3/8" adjustable racking arm/cane with a 135* bend at the top. You'll clamp a hose straight to it and it'll be removable for cleaning. The fitting is welded to the cap though. A 3/8" thermowell that'll penetrate 15" into the keg in case you want to ferment ~5G in it. A 3/8" blow-off port that will be welded into the lid and have a 90* bend. Tubing will be clamped to it.

I had planned on welding a coupler or pipe nipple for the blow-off tube, but I'm not sure the extra threaded connection will be worth it. I just bought a mean tubing bender for this. I had a crappy one from Harbor Freight, tried one from Home Depot, but neither would actually bend .035 wall SS well and both destroyed thinner material.

If you want to use CO2 to transfer, you can remove the blow off hose and attach a CO2 hose to the blow-off port, but there will not be a pressure release valve. However, there also will be no way to actually close the thing off and seal it either since there is no valve on the blow-off. The racking cane/arm will have a bell at the end so that it cannot be removed unless the whole thing is removed. Hopefully that'll keep someone from shooting it through thier head.

Oh, now that I have a tubing bender, I'll be adding SS racking canes to the line as well.

[bwarbiany]

Oh, long time since I brought this up...

Dustin never added campden tablets. He just dropped his fridge down to about 33 degrees and let it sit there for oh, about 4 months -- because we hadn't brewed in the interim and he's too lazy to pour it out.

So two weeks, ago, with Tim graciously loaning us his conical to ferment the Milk Stout we brewed, we decided it was time to get rid of that foul, nasty, fruit-fly-infected mess.

Before taking such drastic steps, of course, I wanted to smell it... Hmm... Doesn't smell sour. Maybe I can take a taste... Hmm... This actually tastes okay!

So we kegged it and I've got it on tap now. Is it the beer I hoped it would be? Not quite, it's a bit on the "thin" side and has quite possibly oxidized just slightly due to being stored in plastic for four months. But it's drinkable and good enough

Win!