I've been brewing about a year and fermenting with a big mouth bubbler glass carboy. If I knew then what I knew now I would not have gone that route for a few reasons (even though overall I like the big mouth). I just upgraded to a conical though and excited to try it. I'm mainly an IPA guy and over my first year have gotten pretty decent at keeping oxygen out with my current process, but it's a struggle with the current equipment and I know I'm not perfect with it. I wanted to lay out my plan here and get input. I have searched the forums and other sources and seen bits and pieces but haven't seen that describes everything I am looking for so thought I'd put my plan out there and let people pick it apart. Just going to start at the fermenter portion since I'm not changing the hot side. My new fermenter is an 8 gallon Ferm Tank TC from delta brewing.
1) Transfer from kettle, aerate and pitch yeast. This part seems pretty straight forward.
2) Initially I'm planning to connect a 1.5" barbed blow off to one of the 1.5" ports on the lid. I probably could skip this step with the headspace of the 8 gallon FV, but I have yet to not have a lot of krausen in the blow off tube when I brew a NEIPA so feel nervous not doing this.
3) After high krausen I'll replace the barb with a cap with an air post then connect a tube similar to a blow off into a bucket of star san. I get that I am introducing a bit of air here, but fermentation should still be active and creating CO2 so hoping minimal effect. Eventually I'll probably get brave (probably after the first time) and skip step 2 to eliminate that. I could also go with an airlock here, but I feel like not having to deal with that later in the process will be helpful.
4) After fermentation is done soft crash to 50F. I'll connect the post I was using for blow off to about a psi of CO2 to account for temp change. After about 24hrs dump yeast. My plan to prevent O2 from bubbling up into the fermenter leave the ~1 psi on the gas post.
5) Dry hop - I built a dry hopper I can connect to the 4" TC in the lid. (I get the 4" is probably overkill - I don't plan to use the chiller option so might as well use the big hole to dump hops in). Add the hops to the dry hopper. Purge with CO2. Dump the hops in.
6) Rouse hops - If I can I'll just shake the fermenter here (today I just shake the keg), but likely will need to connect CO2 through the drain port, purge everything and then burp some CO2 to stir things up.
7) Cold crash - similar procedure the soft crash.
8) Closed transfer - I'm planning to have a FDT and liquid port on the other 1.5" TC. I know the FV has a racking port and maybe I'm weird here but I just feel more comfortable using the floating dip tube because that's what I've done with all batches so far. I'm sure I'm leaving hops in the FV this way and seems the easiest way to keep the transfer air free.
Once it's in the keg things would be the same as today.
Partly it helped just to type that out, but looking to see what I may have missed. Thanks for the input and if there are resources I missed feel free to point me there.
1) Transfer from kettle, aerate and pitch yeast. This part seems pretty straight forward.
2) Initially I'm planning to connect a 1.5" barbed blow off to one of the 1.5" ports on the lid. I probably could skip this step with the headspace of the 8 gallon FV, but I have yet to not have a lot of krausen in the blow off tube when I brew a NEIPA so feel nervous not doing this.
3) After high krausen I'll replace the barb with a cap with an air post then connect a tube similar to a blow off into a bucket of star san. I get that I am introducing a bit of air here, but fermentation should still be active and creating CO2 so hoping minimal effect. Eventually I'll probably get brave (probably after the first time) and skip step 2 to eliminate that. I could also go with an airlock here, but I feel like not having to deal with that later in the process will be helpful.
4) After fermentation is done soft crash to 50F. I'll connect the post I was using for blow off to about a psi of CO2 to account for temp change. After about 24hrs dump yeast. My plan to prevent O2 from bubbling up into the fermenter leave the ~1 psi on the gas post.
5) Dry hop - I built a dry hopper I can connect to the 4" TC in the lid. (I get the 4" is probably overkill - I don't plan to use the chiller option so might as well use the big hole to dump hops in). Add the hops to the dry hopper. Purge with CO2. Dump the hops in.
6) Rouse hops - If I can I'll just shake the fermenter here (today I just shake the keg), but likely will need to connect CO2 through the drain port, purge everything and then burp some CO2 to stir things up.
7) Cold crash - similar procedure the soft crash.
8) Closed transfer - I'm planning to have a FDT and liquid port on the other 1.5" TC. I know the FV has a racking port and maybe I'm weird here but I just feel more comfortable using the floating dip tube because that's what I've done with all batches so far. I'm sure I'm leaving hops in the FV this way and seems the easiest way to keep the transfer air free.
Once it's in the keg things would be the same as today.
Partly it helped just to type that out, but looking to see what I may have missed. Thanks for the input and if there are resources I missed feel free to point me there.