A couple years back, I upgraded from a fermonster to an Anvil Stainless “Bucket” fermenter, and loved it so much that I bought a second. Now I am looking into something that would give me the option of pressure, and that would be easy to dry hop without adding any oxygen (I’ve seen some conicals with low-O2 dry hop doo-dads). My preference would be to avoid plastic, but that’s not a complete dealbreaker. In general I prefer simpler, analog things, and would like to be able to continue using my chest freezer to control fermentation temperature (not interested in dealing with glycol). I’m looking for something that can do basic 5-6 gallon batches.
My thoughts are: (1) buy 6-gallon kegs with floating dip tubes – works for everything except easy low-O2 dry hopping, (2) buy other “stainless buckets” and rig something with magnets maybe to drop dry hops at the right time, (3) get a conical, but which one?
What would everyone recommend? If I go for a keg, what keg should I get? If I get a stainless bucket or a conical, which one should I get?
This is what I use and I am very happy with it. They are a little pricey but that falls under the adage of buy once cry once. Conical Unitank | Spike Brewing
I’ve never seen used 6 gal corny kegs on sale. Brewing 4 gallon batches in 5 gallon kegs is just too much compromise for me. But it might be worth it to buy new 6 gallon corny kegs if the quality is good. The only issue I have is it doesn’t solve the dry hopping problem. There’s no good way to dry hop in a corny keg, imo. Maybe someone can rig a corny lid to some sort of hop bong, but I don’t have those DIY skills.
It looks like that Spike conical would cost nearly $1000 each with all the accessories I’d want. It could be worth it if it wasn’t too much of a compromise, but I don’t think I could use it with my chest freezer and I’d have to use glycol, which is a hassle and probably unworkable for me for 4-5 months out of the year because of the insane Sacramento-area summer heat. I’d love a conical that was designed for use in a chest freezer.
And that is a big compromise, too. The best way to purge a keg is displacement, which you can’t do if you’re putting hops in there. So you have to waste a ton of CO2 and end up with probably still too much O2 in the keg. Then you need to transfer to a third keg for service. And what if one of the dip tubes in this process gets clogged? No thanks. I’d do lagers in kegs, but it doesn’t seem superior to using a stainless bucket fitted with a hop bag and magnets when it comes to dry hopping.
I have the Spike conical 5g and opted for temperature control though I did not buy the glycol chiller. Ice water buckets work well. And this summer (Minnesota) I brewed with kveik. If you go kegs MoreBeer has the Toroedos, as I couldn’t recommend used kegs.
Yeah I guess from what I’m hearing, there is no good option for pressure, dry hopping, and temperature control for me unless I built out a custom walk-in refrigerator or something.
My summer highs are over 110F, and I experience months where every day is over 90F. It’s 89F today in October (and that’s not unusual). Either I’m looking at a $1,000 conical that would require I build a fermentation chamber or buy an upright freezer or a fridge that fits a conical, or im looking at using kegs that won’t be ideal for dry hopping, or I’m sticking with a stainless bucket or going with plastic.
Of the options, it seems like I’m best-served by using stainless buckets for dry hopped beers and using 6 gal kegs for pale lagers and other non-dry-hopped beers where pressure is desirable. If only my stainless buckets could handle even a little pressure…
I’m perfectly happy fermenting in kegs and putting my drop hops in a serving keg, purging, and transferring onto them. For the price, I suggest you not knock it until you try it. All the fear of O2 and oxidation of beer is just that– fear. Remember how many CO2 refills and used kegs you can get for the price of a really fancy conical. Let skepticism be your guide!
It’s not worth it to dry hop in serving kegs for the hassle factor alone. It is a tremendous hassle (and substantial expense) for me to swap or refill a CO2 tank. And I have dry-hopped in a serving keg before and find it to be sub-par both in terms of beer quality and in terms of hassle factor (clogs happen). Then there is the O2 issue. I just don’t trust a purged keg that hasn’t been displaced unless it’s really been purged a ton. Again there’s a hassle factor to that. I want to Now, I did encounter a product that’s a cornelius lid with a 1.5” tri-clamp fitting attached to a tube welded to the lid. Theoretically, I can get behind something like that if I can rig some sort of hop bong to it, but it does eventually become very tall and might exceed acceptable height for my purposes.
There’s always the approach of containing your hops with something ferromagnetic and then putting a strong enough magnet on the outside of the keg. When it’s time to dry hop, pull the magnet away, and the hops fall in the beer.
Those are cool gadgets that might be less hassle for the OP. What is the difference between purging the hop bong with CO2 to exclude oxygen and purging a keg with dry hops in it during a transfer other than the volume of CO2 you might need though? In the end of the day, you are still blind as to how much O2 is being put into your beer.
Not trying to have anyone defend either method, just pointing out that without actually measuring Dissolve Oxygen in your beer, every method suffers the same problem. That’s why I do the least cumbersome and expensive method (for me) and trust my taste buds to detect in there in an oxygen problem or not.
The difference is the volume of CO2 to spend purging and the volume of air to purge out. And the total extra work and time.
It may be true that a hop bong doesn’t purge enough and isn’t worth the cost and hassle of using it — I haven’t tried it personally and I am a little skeptical. But it is a certainty that dry hopping in a keg that is not purged by displacement and then transferring into a third keg is a tremendous hassle for me.
As I said, it is an enormous hassle and substantial expense for me to refill CO2 tanks these days. It involves taking a CO2 tank on a bicycle and then a commuter train and then leaving work 30 minutes early to stop at a shop that will charge me ~$35 for a refill. Or wait until all my tanks are empty and drive to work that day (adds 2 stressful hours to my day). Then there’s the fact that I personally found a huge difference in beer longevity from purging by displacing starsan solution compared to my prior method of purging by just spraying in CO2 a bunch and venting. Then add the effort of transferring yet again to get the beer off of the dry hops and having to clean another keg. I’d rather swear off IPA than have to deal with all that. And if you say leaving the beer in the dry hops for service is fine I say it isn’t and I know from personal experience that I don’t like it.
Conicals just seem impractical to me for home use, both in price and form factor, unless you really want to dump yeast during fermentation. I’d stick to the bucket and try the magnets.
The buckets work, but I wish they were just a little better made and able to take some pressure. I actually have some rust developing on mine and that just doesn’t seem like something that should happen to any stainless steel product used for food.
I think the kegmenter is worth consideration, whether or not you utilize the hop bong attachment. It’s easy to use, easy to clean, free of extraneous ports, and holds twice the pressure as most homebrew conicals (you can fully carbonate a beer at ale temps with a spunding valve). It also fits in a chest freezer.
It is under consideration. Seems like it does everything I need and I could probably do a 6 gal batch in there if I want to (helpful when I expect to lose a lot of beer to dry hops). I hope they have one at my local(ish) morebeer showroom so I can play with it and judge how heavy it feels and stuff like that. I do think 6 gal kegs torpedo kegs are a better price and easier footprint, but the standard corny keg opening makes it hard to affix a hop bong. I might to one of each and just use the torpedo for non dry-hopped beers.
I use a SS Brewtech Brewbucket classic, and it’s hard to beat for the price. It can’t hold pressure to carbonate, but you can definitely push 1-2 psi of CO2 to transfer the beer out. The flat lid is also nice, and could be retrofitted with a tri clamp bulkhead fitting if you want to modify it. Back when I did 10 gallon batches, I was looking into making my own kegmenter style system with a Sanke that I took the spear out of. For 5 gallons I find this to be easier to work with and clean.
I’m going to try to do some kind of magnetic dry hop release on my next IPA, so I’ll let you know how that goes.