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Fermenting in a Sanke Keg
Anyone ever tried this? I never thought about it until I came across this:
http://www.brewershardware.com/Sanke-Fermenter-Kits/
Seems like it could work out pretty well...
I have fermented in a sanke that had a similar modification and it worked out very well. The only downside to the design that you found is the small opening. This would make it quite difficult to clean out. The keg that I used had a much larger tri-clamp opening which allowed you to stick your arm into the keg to scrub it down. I guess a good soak with a PBW or oxyclean solution could also do the trick, though, and wouldn't require scrubbing. Although this would use a lot of water (15 gal) per cleaning. Cheers!
Hopefully 1n1m3g sees this and can chime in, he uses a converted keg to ferment in. It is the perfect size for large batches, but does have some drawbacks.
Like everything else in HBing, cleaning is always a PITA, and it is difficult to get it perfect and sanitized without seeing inside of it completely. Then you have the weight issue of moving it to its temp destination. If you use a fridge/freezer for temp control, then size and weight become issues.
I would think if you could rack your wort into it right in a fermentation chamber without moving it, then rack off of it to keg or secondary would work.
I have also heard of people using one upside down, and hooking up a tri-clamp and ball valve to the opening to use as a yeast dump like a conical. You would then need to modify the bottom, which would now be the top to fill and port for blowoff. Not sure if the angle of the convex is steep enough to collect effectively, but interesting nonetheless.
I use an old tapper. The gas inlet is where I attached the airlock, works fine.
I like the idea of the thermowell, but I plan to build a glycol temperature controlled fermenter, because I believe I will have better temperature control.
Mark
triguy84 wrote:
I use an old tapper. The gas inlet is where I attached the airlock, works fine.
I like the idea of the thermowell, but I plan to build a glycol temperature controlled fermenter, because I believe I will have better temperature control.
Mark
Post some pics of that when you get it built. Sounds interesting.
yeah cleaning would be a bitch. they do mention that you can always throw a sanke on your burner with a couple gallons of water in it and between the boiling and steam, plus a good pbw soak up upside down, you should get most of the trub/krausen residue, but it is a pain to not be able to get a good visual.
and also would probably have to rack straight into ferementation chamber, chest freezer. then i guess you could just push into cornies or aging vessels under co2 pressure, which would be nice.
1n1m3g - do you have any pics or links to the keg with the larger opening tri-clamp?
Here's a picture of the sanke I used in action. I left it large so you could see the larger tri-clamp setup on the top. That's some serious blow-off, huh? 
Cheers!
that is sweet. Did the keg come stock with that large of an opening?
that is a serious blow off!
yeah, is that a custom job on the large opening?
I've got a friend who fermented in sankes before he got his conicals. Just remove the spear, use a large drilled rubber stopper and add a blow off tube. The cool thing about using them to ferment in is that you can use steam to sterilize it - add a little water to the keg, stick it on a burner and wait for it to boil.
Yeah, this is a custom job. The guy who this thing belongs to owned a brewery at the time and had his welder put that tri-clamp on. I'm sure the tri-clamp fitting wasn't cheap but it really made the difference when cleaning this thing out, especially after a fermentation like that one! Cheers!
1n1m3g wrote:
The guy who this thing belongs to owned a brewery at the time
Didnt he just open up another brewpub?
Hmmm This would be pretty neat to make, and even better to have!
I dug around and found one of the clamps, they're not as high as I would have thought, at 40 bucks.
http://www.mcmaster.com/#tri-clamp-tube … gs/=6l78n5
If you could find a piece of pipe or tubing (could weld up this from some sheet too i guess) that was 6'' D, and a another piece of plate, and a 6'' rubber gasket you would be in business, only some welding standing before you and awesome fermenting vessel.
Too many ideas!
thirsty wrote:
1n1m3g wrote:
The guy who this thing belongs to owned a brewery at the time
Didnt he just open up another brewpub?
nope, that fell through...
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