SS Brewtech Brew Bucket Mod

[beerjeff]

I'm wondering if anyone has done a yeast dump mod and can share what they did, successes, learnings, etc... Interested in giving it a shot, but doing a modification on a $200 piece of equipment makes me a bit nervous.

 

[normonster]

I've thought about it, but you'd have to elongate the legs which would increase height. I'd be more interested in a nice welded valve than a trub dumper myself.

If you just want the yeast though, you can use my way (actually stolen from some other guy on here): remove the dip tube, as it is useless, ferment as normal, then after racking all the beer off the yeast, gently swirl until it's all suspended in the last of the beer, then just tip sideways and use the valve to let the yeast out. Works.

 

[717brewer]

Having owned a 'real' 7 gallon conical with a 1/2" tri-clamp dump tube and the SS Brew Bucket I would say be careful going through something like this as to me there wasn't any real benefit of capturing yeast this way. Even the 1/2" diameter tri-clamp would often get clogged with yeast/trub in the week plus it sat while the beer fermented so I often wasn't able to capture enough yeast to make it worth the effort. I enjoy little DIY projects as much as anyone but I would just caution that this seems like a lot of work to reengineer a product for minimal gain. I also think if you dumped all the yeast out of the bottom of the Brew Bucket you'd just be leaving behind a few cups of beer since it would be below the valve on the side.

I think this is one of many cases where homebrewers try to mimic commercial practices when they don't really need to do so, and I'm as guilty as anyone, because many things are much easier on the small scares we deal with. IMO you are much better off just overbuilding a starter and saving a mason jar's worth of fresh yeast so you don't have to worry about washing it of trub, etc. after it has already fermented your batch.

http://brulosophy.com/methods/yeast-harvesting/