Trub Collector for Conical

[Pash91]

Hello,
I did a search, but came up short. I just went to dump my trub from my conical (lots of dry hops in a hop bag and yeast) and it seemed like it dumped a little out, but was just pouring beer out while not doing much to the rest of the trub. I noticed the V Vessel has a yeast collector and I wonder if anyone has attempted to do something similar to it with some DIY engineering. I was thinking of using a stiff plastic bottle that I can attach to the bottom port with some sort of QD; that way you can see how much of the bottom part of your conical is trub vs beer (so you know whether you've still got a mess above the port).

Any thoughts?

In the meantime, I fashioned a way to get CO2 attached to the conical and using the brewer's hardware filter, filter the beer on the way out to the keg. Hopefully it works

 

[Lennie]

I've had this same thing happen. I think a lot of the trub just sits on the sides of the tapered part of the conical. I have been tapping it with a rubber mallet daily to try and keep it moving on down, otherwise I really don't care if it stays on the sides as long as I can harvest some yeast, and the beer comes out clear from the racking port.

 

[Pash91]

That's the problem, it's not coming out clear. Maybe I should tap the sides a little bit to get it away from the racking port?

 

[Lennie]

You might get a racking arm that you can twist to move it up and away from the physical edge of the conical. Then you're pulling beer from out in the middle of liquid and that'll minimize the stuff coming off the surfaces near the racking port area.

Also, maybe the plastic trub collector from the V vessel could be used on your conical, it might have a tri-clamp connection. I just don't think its a matter of there not being enough room at the bottom of the conical, I think its the fact that the yeast/trub sticks to the angled sides of the cone section.

 

[cfrazier77]

I made such a device with spare parts I had laying around. It has worked well for quite a few batches. It is two nipples with a cap on one end and connected to the valve on the other. I close the valve and dump the yeast once a day or every other day depending on the yeast and size of the batch. I then open the cap with a sanitized mason jar under it. I am thinking about upgrading to a sight glass instead of the tubing though, but it works and I have not gotten any problems from reusing the yeast.