Blichmann Cornical

[Laphroaig]

Okay, I'm in the market for a new Fermentor. I keep circling back to the Cornical. I seriously think it's probably the best bang for the buck. My reasoning:

Dump Valve is 1.5" Butterfly and Tri-Clover.
Rotating Racking/Sampling Arm
Steep Cone
Full Stainless
Can Pressurize to 50 psi for whatever reasons you may need that.
Small width, can fit two side by side in a fermenter fridge.
Don't need to buy a tri-clover adapter to pressurize for transfer, ball lock already there.
additions easily added through corny keg top.

Not seeing a lot of downsides here? Compared to other 7 gallon stainless conicals it is pretty full featured. Don't know why they don't get more love.

 

[cactolith]

I bought one recently and just went through to bottling. Gotta say I love the thing! All the points you list above and a few more I discovered during use. I circled around in the same loop for a while and finally pulled the trigger. Glad I did.

 

[daveerickson]

What do you do for temperature control?

 

[Vale71]

Not seeing a lot of downsides here?

No built-in sample port.
No built-in carbonation/aeration stone.
No built-in termperature probe.
Cannot mount any tri-clover attached accessories up top.
No cooling option either coil or jacket so no glycol chiller can be used.

But the prices is certainly unbeatable if you're OK with the downsides.

 

[augiedoggy]

No built-in sample port.
No built-in carbonation/aeration stone.
No built-in termperature probe.
Cannot mount any tri-clover attached accessories up top.
No cooling option either coil or jacket so no glycol chiller can be used.

But the prices is certainly unbeatable if you're OK with the downsides.

I dont know if we are talking about the same thing but as far as the blichmann cornical, Its not what I would consider a great value vs a real, sanitary conical like a stout conical for the same money, but you can easily control temps with a Coolzone velcro cooling jacket . Or the discharge hose method. also, they also do make long narrow stainless cooling coils ive seen people mount in lids.
Most people use the valve at the top of the cone for sampling as many home brewing conicals dont have these sampling valves.

The whole fermenting in a keg and then limiting yourself to using it as the serving vessel is a limitation to me but every person sees it differently. a used corny keg is $25-50... why not buy a couple of those to be able to brew while you have a beer in the keezer? it just seems gimmicky, looks cool in theory but... again depends on process and everyones different.

 

[cactolith]

What do you do for temperature control?

Short answer is I don't. Slightly longer answer is we have aircons in each room and I just place it in the one closest to the temp I want. Nothing fancy...