in reference to
@Dgallo 's fermentation vessel, I built one over the weekend and threw in a batch of A24 fermenting wort. A few things I learned about building one of these and what they do under pressure.
1. I decided to use the floating dip tube, and bought a
"pressure kit" for a fermentasaurus because it had the gas and liquid ball lock towers for less than piecing one together.
2. The
fermonster PET container's floor "bows out" under 15 psi. This caused it to rock in my mini fridge (I got kicked out of the larger fridge in the basement by my wife so I had to source a new temp controller) and kick open the door. I was around to fix this.
3. Due to the shape of the fermonster changing under pressure, I need to cut and design a round "mount" with a hole in the middle. This will support the vessel when the floor of it balloons out.
4. I decided to dry hop it this morning. Gravity has dropped to 1.052 from 1.062, and the yeast is rolling. Pressure is steady at 15psi.... what do you think happened? I wasn't thinking and after blowing off the pressure I pulled the lid, at which the krausen decided to "boil over" the lid, causing the dry hops I just tossed in and the yeast to gunk up the o-ring of the lid. Cleaning this quickly with sanitizer was a trick further complicated by the floating dip tube.
5. If you are planning on building a fermonster based pressure vessel, do not get one with the spigot at the bottom. This container will not tolerate any holes in the side of it under pressure.
There is finesse with a pressure vessel like this. Sealing the ball lock posts is easy. Use sanitizer water to test your work (leaks bubble the water under pressure). Also check your spunding valve for leaks (I made it from these parts sourced from either this thread or another one, and it works quite well)
Pressure gauge
1/4" Tee
1/4" Flare to NPT for the ball lock post
Adjustable pressure valve
I use this in conjunction with a
Fermentrack raspberry pi based controller with a Wemos based
iSpindel wireless hydrometer in the vessel. This plus a mini fridge and IR heating bulb are a great economical alternative to a Flex+ or CF5 plus glycol systems, which I dream about someday doing.
Big thanks to
@Dgallo and
@Loud Brewing for the info for this build.
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