Anyone have a Fermentasaurus?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
The Distributors Map shows that MoreBeer is supposed to carry it, but it hasn't been added to their website yet. Have you found it in the U.S.?
 
The only person I know who actually is currently using one is Gash Slugg the moderator of the big homebrewing group on facebook. He's posted a lot of videos over the last few days on his youtube channel. It's an Aussie product so it's being used over there, and I don't know when it will actually land here.

His Youtube page
 
I was told by morebeer that they are expecting to have them in June. They did not have a price estimate though
 
Yeah I'm interested in buying one too. Ebay has them but shipping is like $80 here.
 
casualbrewer said:
Yeah I'm interested in buying one too. Ebay has them but shipping is like $80 here.
Click to expand...

That seems to be the only option right now, but yeah way too expensive on the shipping. The price in Austrailia is totally doable. I'm hoping that since more beer will get them in bulk the price won't go sky high...
 
I just ordered one in New Zealand (where the price is also pretty damn reasonable). I'll report back on how the first batch goes.
 
German pils with Motueka and Saaz in the Fermentasaurus now.

Filled to 30.5 liters (35 liters is the size of the vessel) so hopefully the pressure keeps the krauesen under control. Spunding valve disn't arrive (despite allowing 8 days for shipping) so I'll have to do the pressure release manually over the first few days.

IMG_20170506_233822.jpg
 
Sadu said:
German pils with Motueka and Saaz in the Fermentasaurus now.

Filled to 30.5 liters (35 liters is the size of the vessel) so hopefully the pressure keeps the krauesen under control. Spunding valve disn't arrive (despite allowing 8 days for shipping) so I'll have to do the pressure release manually over the first few days.
Click to expand...

What are your initial thoughts on quality and design? If you are in the US where did you get yours?
 
planker101 said:
What are your initial thoughts on quality and design? If you are in the US where did you get yours?
Click to expand...

I'm in New Zealand, so not in the US.

Initial impression is pretty good. It's basically a big coke bottle with keg fittings on top and a collection bottle at the bottom. The build quality is as expected.

Pros:
It's a pressurized conical at a way better price than anything else on the market. Having carbed beer at the end of fermentation is a huge plus for me. Sick of having boxes of beer everywhere at various stages of completion.

Love the 35L size, especially given that less headspace is needed. My batch is still in the lag phase but I'll report on how this goes.

The support seems really good too. I asked Oxebar a question about heat belts and got a really detailed reply back within about 90 mins answering my question and more that I hadn't asked. Pretty cool.

Nothing leaked for me and assembly was straightforward. Sanitising was painless.

Cons:

It definitely takes more space in the fridge than my old 30L bucket. I had to lose a whole shelf. This is just part of being conical I guess.

It's now 15 hours since pitching and there's a huge lot of trub collecting at the bottom of the cone - but it doesn't seem to be finding it's way into the collection pot. As if it's getting stuck on the butterfly valve. I haven't used a conical before so I don't know if this is normal, will give it a bit more time to settle out. If I have to go poking at the trub to get it to fall into the bottle that defies the point.
 
Sounding good Sadu, hopefully the trub falls. Let us know.

You could use the normal top until it's fermented then add dextrose and the pressure cap so you can carb but don't have to release pressure manually until the spunding valve arrives.
 
Yeah, that's a lot of pressure
Maybe just hook up a blowoff for peak fermentation, then prv
Could reach pretty high psi pretty quick and blow up while sleeping
 
The current Australian Ebay price is about $97 US, + shipping, It will be interesting to see what the more beer price is. Maybe it will be eligible for free shipping. Also, 30 L ferment capacity is about 8 gallons, maybe not the best for US homebrewers used to 5 or 10 gallon batches. I'd have to get an upright freezer to put it in, unless I was fermenting at ambient temperature. I really like the concept of being able to ferment and easily transfer under pressure to a serving keg. I don't think I'd serve from the Fermenasaurus, it would just take up too much room. If the price is right, I'll try one.
 
I totally agree about the size. I wish they made one that could do 10 gallon batches. Maybe if it is succesful they will come out with a new model.
 
Up to day 6 now. Fermentation finished about day 4.

A few observations.

The clear walls are amazing. Coming from plastic buckets it's so cool being able to see what stage things are at.

Removing the trub/yeast sounds good in theory, in practice it's a complete disaster. I thought I was going to end up with clear beer in the conical by easily removing all the yeast and trub from the bottom. In practice it's way too much work and I think I'm just oxidising my beer now. Basically the yeast seems quite happy to sit in the cone and not drop down into the collection bottle without considerable agitation. Maybe with extract brewing you don't have so much trub and removing it might be feasible, with a 30 liter AG batch we are looking at about 5-6 liters of trub/yeast which would fill the collection jar literally a dozen times over. Maybe with a 2 liter collection jar this might be feasible but I'm struggling to see how this is supposed to work.

I just added my dry hops in the bottle, there is still 2.5L of yeast in the cone. Not sure how those hops are going to work their way through the yeast cone into the beer but will see how it plays out.

Next time I'm going to filter the break material in between the kettle and fermentor. Less trub to remove would definitely be helpful. Might look at dry-hopping through the top and repressurising next time, and also just leave the yeast cake alone and forget about trying to remove it. I'm planning to rack to keg anyway and I don't really care about harvesting yeast on day 4 vs waiting until the beer is racked out of the fermentor.

Also my spunding valve seems to leak. I went to bed on day 3 with 10psi, woke up with 3psi. Seems that fermentation finished and the spunding leaked whatever pressure had built up. So at the moment the fermentation is over and the beer is uncarbonated, so not really what I was looking for.

I think a lot of this comes down to dialing in a new system. The whole point of buying this was to get carbonated beer so I'm bummed I didn't get that this time. But also I know what the issues are so I'm pretty sure it's fixable for next time.

IMG_20170512_230213[1].jpg


IMG_20170512_230225[1].jpg
 
It's a great fridge, Fisher & Paykel Activesmart. My old brewing fridge started acting up just before we went away over summer holiday and I didn't want my lagers to ferment hot while I was away.

So I suggested to SWMBO that I could either get a new brewing fridge or we get a new house fridge and I get the old one. She had the new fridge organised within about an hour.

Then I managed to fix the old one, now I have 2 brewing fridges. This one holds the fermentasaurus pefectly. They have detailed measurements on the Oxebar website if anyone else is looking.
 
Any update Sadu?
Did the trub drop eventually?

One of the fermentasaurus videos on youtube show him blasting the dry hops in the bottle with CO2 before he puts it back on the fermenter, that might be the way to avoid oxidising the beer.

My plan for carbing is to do exactly the same as I would in the bottle and add dextrose after fermentation is complete, that way I know how carbed it'll be and won't need a spunding valve. plus means I can take normal hydrometer readings (I assume having carbed beer makes hydrometer readings inaccurate)
 
Nothing dropping into the collection ball (except clear wort) or a clogging valve. The exact reason I ditched my FastFerment. 6 batches and not once did it work as intended. Literally had to bend a coat hanger and ram it down the middle of the vessel (sanitized, of coarse). Switched to wide mouth glass carboys and never looked back.
 
Today is day 13. It hasn't exactly gone to plan but like I said before there's a bit of learning curve with any new equipment.

The 2L of yeast in the picture doesn't want to move. I suspect it's partially a matter of yeast sticking to the sides rather than a solid block but wither way, I have given up trying to remove it.

Because my spunding valve leaked the fermentation finished with minimal pressure, so I force carbed. It's in primary and now fully carbed which is cool. I have been taking a few sneaky samples with the picnic tap and it tastes very decent.

I started crash cooling on day 9 with FG of 1.009, no gelatin. It's pretty clear, should get clearer in the keg.

For the modest 40g dry hop I tried using the bottle underneath but my hops just got stuck under the trub so I opened up the lid and dry-hopped from the top instead, then purged the headspace. This isn't ideal.

I'm going to do a closed pressure transfer to a keg tomorrow and bottle the leftover. There has been more losses than normal with this batch, partly due to yeast removal but if I'm being honest it's also because the beer is fully carbed, cold and there is a picnic tap attached :tank:

Tomorrow I'm having another go with a hoppy pale ale. I'm planning to whirlpool and filter the trub/hops on the way into the fermentor so there's less to deal with. If the yeast is going to be difficult to move with the collection bottle then I'm going to leave it be, but it would be cool to remove all the yeast so I can dryhop from the bottom. If not will dryhop from the top before primary fermentation is over so the yeast can scrub the O2. I'll also remove the spunding as soon as things start slowing and monitor the pressure manually. Haven't decided on temperature yet, normally I'd do 18c with s-05 but I might try 20c this time.

Another way people dryhop these things is to go in through the beer line. Make a hop soup in a PET bottle, pressurise it, then lower the pressure in the fermentor and blast the hop juice in through the beer line. This could be a viable method once I get a carbonation cap.

Where I'm coming from is that the yeast is such a hassle to remove, and I don't actually mind it being there so long as I can do my dry-hop. It seemed to force carb fine with the yeast in place.

Also taking the gravity reading wasn't a big deal. I just filled the trial jar from the picnic tap, left it for a couple of hours to warm to room temp and lose the fizz. Then take a reading as normal. You could also pour the sample from one cup to another repeatedly to decarbonate, so not a big deal either way.

Despite the challenges I'm really happy with this purchase. Ultimately it's all about how the beer tastes, and at not quite 2 weeks old this lager is already very drinkable.
 
I was looking at their website and I noticed they adapted the clear beer system for withdrawal. I wonder if the clear beer guys know that they are infringing on their patent if it's sold in the US? I own two of the clear beer systems and it looks pretty much identical, just not in a Cornelius keg.
 
Got my NE IPA underway and it's looking pretty good, I dropped 3 bottles of trub off the bottom before fermentation got so active that all the trub got kicked up. I found the best way to make sure there were no air bubbles or wort pockets in the trub in the bottle was to squeeze pump the bottle (I'm not fermenting under pressure). I've added the first dry hops via the top as there were 125g of them. It's smelling pretty good. Got a sodastream CO2 setup ready and waiting for a bottling gun to arrive and I'll hopefully be able to bottle directly from it.

20170607_171445.jpg


20170607_171837.jpg
 
Nice one. Are you planning on adding priming sugar before bottling, or force-carbing in the fermentasaurus then bottling with the bottling gun?

I bottled a few directly from the fermentasaurus and they came out pretty good, no yeast cake at the bottom of the bottles and carbonation seems to be holding well.

I'm doing 30L batches in mine too, since my boil kettle can handle it, might as well use the space since it's there.
 
Morebeer has them in stock now. Price seems reasonable IF the pressure kit isn't too bad. Pressure kit won't be in stock until sometime in July.

IMG_3783.PNG
 
Sadu said:
Nice one. Are you planning on adding priming sugar before bottling, or force-carbing in the fermentasaurus then bottling with the bottling gun?

I bottled a few directly from the fermentasaurus and they came out pretty good, no yeast cake at the bottom of the bottles and carbonation seems to be holding well.

I'm doing 30L batches in mine too, since my boil kettle can handle it, might as well use the space since it's there.
Click to expand...

I'm going to add priming sugar so I don't waste the sodastream gas.
Glad to hear they worked out ok. Did you bottle them cold?

I'll increase my volume later (got a 70L pot) but just wanted to change 1 thing at the moment :)
 
Pressure kit is listed for $49.99 on More Beer..Looks like a pretty good deal..Wonder if the threads on the valve would allow for mason jars to be attached?
 
I'm told the threads are the same as a sodastream bottle, so if you jack it up on bricks you can connect a larger collection bottle. My fridge doesn't have the height for this, but otherwise it seems like a good idea.

Mason jars can't take pressure, so I wouldn't see that ending well.
 
I just ordered one of these with the pressure kit and anxiously wait its arrival. Finding a competent fermenter has proved to be a challenge for me so far.

I had been using carboys. Biggest issue is there is just not enough headspace in them. I use WY1318 which needs a lot of room and it would either explode out or ooze out of the carboys every single time. A huge mess and PITA. Also doing a closed transfer from them is not with out issues and about 50% of the time causes my a major headache.

So I recently moved to 7.9 gallon speidels. Headspace issue is gone! But even with upgraded valves on the bottom racking has been a nightmare. They keep getting clogged from all the trub and not being able to see where the dip tube is has made trying to rack from the top via a closed transfer method difficult.

I am hoping the fermentasaus solves all my issues. I was considering one of the new spikes, but for the price of one of those I could order 4 of these things. Biggest issue I see with these currently is lack of temp control solution. Maybe some one will come out with something. But the combination of headspace, ability to ferment under pressure, ability to see exactly what is going on with the beer, ability to remove trub and ability to do a closed transfer from the top of the beer just ticks all the boxes. Only one it misses is being shiny :)

Hope these ship sooner rather than later in July!

EDIT: Just got shipping confirmation! Should be here in about a week. They are showing in stock for the fermenters AND the pressure kits, so looks like they got them in ahead of schedule. Cant wait to give this a go.
 
Sadu said:
I'm told the threads are the same as a sodastream bottle, so if you jack it up on bricks you can connect a larger collection bottle. My fridge doesn't have the height for this, but otherwise it seems like a good idea.
Click to expand...

Would this be the bottles that should work?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WZ8Q4W/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I usually have a ton of trub so I know I would fill one of these. But I also usually dry hop with about 8oz of hops and it looks like the default collection bottle can maybe hold an ounce or two at most. It would be nice to be able to attach a larger bottle for dry hopping and not having to open the top port.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
marjen said:
So I recently moved to 7.9 gallon speidels. Headspace issue is gone! But even with upgraded valves on the bottom racking has been a nightmare. They keep getting clogged from all the trub and not being able to see where the dip tube is has made trying to rack from the top via a closed transfer method difficult.
Click to expand...

That's really odd, you must have a ton of trub. I've gone 100 batches or so with Speidels and the stock valve and have never had a clog. Sucks a little bit of the yeast cake in but that's about it. I use a hop spider so no hops getting in the fermenter and there's usually about a 2" yeast cake, I rotate the spigot 90 degrees just prior to kegging, never an issue...

:smack: I guess you did say you get a ton of trub.

I would wonder what is causing you to have so much that it is causing you to have these kind of racking issues??
 
I would wonder what is causing you to have so much that it is causing you to have these kind of racking issues??
Click to expand...

I usually add about 5-6 oz of hops at flame out whirlpool and a lot ends up making it into the fermenter. Additionally I usually add about 8 oz hops in the fermenter. I make NE IPAs so lots of hop residue.
 
I always prop my 60l up with a 2x4 under one side, place the spigot at the highest point, facing out of the fermentation fridge. Never have any problems. The cake/hope compact well after a cold crash.
I push the first keg out with co2, then lift the fermentor and close loop siphone the second keg.
Took at bit of trial an error but this system has work well for me the last several batches.
 
More beer is shipping already, mine should be here Wednesday. I might order a second one since they are on sale.

edit: ordered a second.
 
I have 2 fermenatasaus on the way and have a question about the pressure fermentation process. Does anyone know what is the default value the relief valve is set to? How about what value the pressure will get up to while fermenting naturally under pressure for about 7-10 days?
 
yowzers said:
I was looking at their website and I noticed they adapted the clear beer system for withdrawal. I wonder if the clear beer guys know that they are infringing on their patent if it's sold in the US? I own two of the clear beer systems and it looks pretty much identical, just not in a Cornelius keg.
Click to expand...

I've thought about hooking up one of my clear draught systems up to the inside of my SS Brewtech brew bucket to see if it would work. Maybe I'll have to give it a try.
 

Similar threads

D
Should I oxygenate the wort for a tripel I'm pitching onto a yeast cake?
Replies
13
Views
991
DuncB
D
D
Where to get 1.5 inch butterfly valve disk replacement?
Replies
7
Views
449
hotbeer
hotbeer
F
when to bottle my session mead?
Replies
4
Views
431
fluketamer
F
F
help with my hop choice for my next lager
Replies
4
Views
662
AlexKay
A
F
how to prevent channeling in the mash pipe
Replies
6
Views
596
JohnDBrewer
J

Latest posts

Back
Top