Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Plastic Conical - Update!

I liked the FastFerment conical so well that I purchased a second one!   I would recommend these to anyone with two minor warnings:  1) They do not seal well.  To get them to seal I first tried lightly sanding the top with a big flat sanding block which helped a little, then I simply added a second gasket which fixed the problem.  When I bought the second one I just automatically ordered an extra gasket.  2)  You must disassemble them to get them completely clean.  The second time I used the first one I simply wiped it out with a soft sponge, sprayed it out with 180 degree PBW, rinsed twice thoroughly and sanitized by putting a gallon of properly prepared StarSan in it and shaking it up with it sealed.   Upon tasting before it went in the keg I could detect a slight tartness that continued to get worse after it was in the keg for a few weeks.  When I did the next beer in the first conical I did the standard cleaning above then removed both the ball valve and the thermowell, cleaned them with a brush and sanitized them by soaking them for 20 minutes in StarSan before putting them back on the fermenter.  This seems to have solved the problem and I have not had bugs in either fermenter since.

No comments:

Post a Comment