Thats the thing, the listing on CL says about 500 bucks for a 15 gal, the same price as your plastic model
I am obsessed! I think I need this.
- Thread starter Bugleman
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I found this video the other day on YouTube. I believe this is the same conical you linked to in your original post. He talks about the pro's and con's of this specific model. Based on his comments, it might be wise to look for a model with a better lid design. Something like this from MoreBeer. I believe its a from Blichmann. Its more money, but the design looks a bit more solid.
Check out the Brewhemoth. You can even get an internal chiller option. Use one all the time for beer. Priced in the $500 range also.
I sometimes wonder if investing in conical fermenters and the needed accessories is moving just a little further down the slippery slope to going pro. ;D
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I was just thinking that with all my nice little carboy dudes, I really couldn't see spending 3-500 bucks on a fermentor just to take a step out of my process unless I was making a HELL of a lot more mead than I am now. It would have to be something in the triple digits of gallons per year to make the cost worth my while, which is around the point where I'd have to start looking into licensing.
I also kind of enjoy the 10-20 minute zen out time of watching all that golden deliciousness run through a tube...taunting me while I wait for it to age, heh. Maybe I lose 1/2 a gallon over time with racking, but so far it's not worth it to me. (Notice I say so far.)
THe Brewhemoth equipment looks like a pretty nice setup for the price.
Also, I found this DIY for setting up a cooling/heating jacket for a conical. He uses a ice chest with a converted window AC unit to cool glycol. Seems like a ice chest would work just as well, be around the same price, and be a lot simpler to setup.
I think you could put together a setup like this with the Brewhemoth. You'd have to modify the leg attachment points though. Or, you could use the Brewhemoth Immersion Chiller option and run glycol through it. For me though, it seems like an external jacket would be the preferred way of doing it (without consideration to the effort involved to set it up).
