Posts Latest Activity Photos. Page of 1. Filtered by:. Previous template Next. I'm looking to open a brewpub with some off site distribution. I expect to have 5 brews at any given time, including at least one lager. Total annual output will be between - bbl. I'm looking at a 10 - 15 bbl brewing system but wanted to get some thoughts on- 1.
What size of each? I appreciate your help Tags: None. Glass jugs and demijohns are available in a wider range of sizes, from half-gallon three-litre jars up to 15 gallon 54 litres demijohns.
Most homebrewers who ferment in glass carboys either use a plastic bucket with a spigot for bottling or keg their finished beer. Glass is transparent which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the plus side, it allows you to see how fermentation is progressing without having to remove the lid. On the downside, you must store them in a dark place or keep them covered to prevent light from causing off flavours.
The small opening of the carboy also makes it impossible to get your hands inside for cleaning and, for small batches, make it slightly harder to transfer your wort from the kettle to the fermenter. Having said that, some manufacturers also offer largemouth carboys and demijohns.
The main disadvantage of glass is that it is fragile. Carboys are susceptible to breaking if they are handled carelessly. Although unlikely, there is also a risk that glass carboys can explode if they become pressurised due to a blocked airlock.
PET Polyethylene Terephthalate is a type of transparent food-grade plastic which is less porous than other plastics typically used for fermenters.
PET carboys combine some of the advantages of plastic with most of the advantages of traditional glass carboys. The only downside is cost, stainless steel fermenters are typically around eight times more expensive than their plastic counterparts. If you have the budget, stainless steel fermenting buckets sold at homebrew suppliers come in three, five, seven and fourteen gallons 11, 19, 26 and 52 litres sizes.
Conical fermenters allow brewers to remove the trub from the beer without having to rack it off into a second vessel. This means that both primary and secondary fermentation can take place in the same vat without exposing the beer to the risk of contamination. Smaller conical fermenters are available for homebrewers. The best-known models include the Fermentasaurus, Fastferment and the Chronicle by SS Brewtech all of which are suitable for brewing five-gallon batches.
Previous post. Next post. Skip to content Fermenters come in a wide range of shapes and sizes to fit all budgets and home brewing needs.
Glass demijohns and carboys are available in a range of sizes What size primary fermenter do I need? This means that cylindrical fermenters, even open versions exposed to a cool atmosphere, have a very large surface area in contact with the tank wall.
Since tanks are made from materials that have relatively low thermal conductivities, more wall area translates to more heat retention. The take away message is that cylindrical fermenters need to be cooled. However, most fermenters are equipped with cooling jackets or coils used to actively remove the heat of fermentation from the vessel using chilled water or glycol.
One advantage of coiling coils, especially in repurposed vessels, is that they can be relatively inexpensive. But coils are not easy to clean and they require considerable length to provide much area.
Most tanks equipped with cooling jackets are designed to be quickly cooled crash cooled following fermentation. Crash cooling requires about 10 times more cooling capacity than maintaining temperature during fermentation. The unitank system combines the functions of fermentation, beer maturation, carbonation sometimes , crash cooling, and yeast collection into a single vessel.
Tanks equipped with cooling jackets or coils will sweat when water from the air condenses on cool tank surfaces, especially exterior heat transfer surfaces, so it is typical to insulate and clad tanks with stainless steel.
This is especially common when the fermentation cellar lacks environmental conditioning. Although a nicety, insulation and cladding adds cost to tanks and is not required. The term cellar is used to describe the space where beer tanks are located. In the days before commercial refrigeration, cellars were a literal description of underground rooms. Breweries continue to use terms like fermentation, lagering, aging, conditioning, and package release cellars to designate parts of a brewery.
The fermenting system may include some method of skimming. Many traditional fermentation systems were self-skimming, and examples include Yorkshire Squares, Burton Unions, and lager fermenters with so-called foam chambers. Open fermenters can be skimmed during fermentation, and this practice is still used by some brewers using these traditional vessels. The purpose of skimming is the removal of cold trub and very bitter hop resins, sometimes called braun hefe brown yeast or brandt hefe burnt yeast , that rises to the surface of fermenting beer.
Skimming systems can also be used to top-crop some ale yeast strains. Most fermenters these days are closed, so these systems must have a vent to allow carbon dioxide to escape during fermentation.
This same vent can be used to bring carbon dioxide into the vessel when the beer is transferred out at the end of the process. Closed fermenters should be rated for pressure. This is a serious safety consideration and the pressure rating of a tank should not be exceeded; period. If the fermenter pressure rating is sufficiently high, natural carbonation can easily be performed by attaching a special pressure relief valve called a spunding or bunging valve to the vent line. While open fermenters are usually cleaned by hand, closed fermenters, especially stainless steel tanks, are equipped with spray balls to permit so-called clean-in-place, or CIP, cleaning.
CIP balls are typically attached to the tank with a line running down the side of the vessel to make hose attachment easy. Cleaning solution can be added to the vessel and recirculated through the spray ball using a properly-sized process pump. The unitank fermenter also known as the cylindroconical tank, CCT, cylindroconical vessel, and CCV has become the de facto standard for most breweries around the world over the last 40 years. Although the modern CCT has a cone bottom, the original unitank design had a flat, sloped bottom.
Dished bottom tanks can also be used for unitanks. Breweries of all sizes use this fermentation method for the production of all sorts of beers. But breweries with older equipment continue using their other systems. Prior to the spread of the unitank, brewers used specialized tanks for each major step of the brewing process, including some brewhouse functions that have largely been replaced by the whirlpool.
With the advent of pressure rated, glass-lined steel tanks, and later stainless steel tanks, brewers could completely finish the aging and conditioning also known as carbonation portion of the process in a single lagering tank.
The ale tradition was similar in many aspects where fermentation was conducted in fermentation vessels and conditioning occurred in the cask. Cask conditioning is not too different from lagering in that clarification, carbonation, and flavor maturation all occur in the same vessel.
The main difference between cask ales and traditional lagers is that lagers were racked out of the lagering tank into the barrel after aging was complete.
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