Choosing a Fermenter: Bucket, Carboy, Keg, or Conical

are you in the market for a fermenter and do not know what kind of a moaner to get well if you're in that situation keep watching I'll walk through a bunch of options for you [Music] hello everyone and welcome back in this video I'm going to talk about fermenters the different types in options pros and cons of them all now if you've been watching my channel for at least 6 months and how you've noticed that I've kind of been on a kick on fermenters primarily the conical z' i've been working and talking with a number of conical suppliers or resellers who send me kana coats for review including the catalyst the fermentis soros what else I got here the vast ferment and most recently the spike brewing stainless steel conical the sea of 10 right I got videos for all those individually you want to see what any of those are all about go check them all out this video is more low-level or actually or maybe it's more high-level so it's more of a which type is right for you rather than the pros and cons of this verse is that right and for some of you who are beginners at this you just really started looking to buy their first piece of equipment or maybe who have one of these existing pieces equipment and doesn't it don't feel like it's serving your your intent or your purposes right and you want to know what else is out there well this is the right video for that right so for starters we have buckets carboys kegs if you didn't know kegs were an option they are and I'll talk about that here too and of course the conical z' and there could be other options out there too but these are the ones i'm i've used in our mostly familiar with and i've have experience with all of this so far and i think you if you want to know the pros and cons of each keep on watching the first type of fermenter most newcomers to this hobby are going to find is a good old fashioned food grade plastic bucket like this one here you know it'll come with a lid with a little hole and a grommet on top or if not you can actually buy your own buckets because they're quite common you can drill your hole put your own ground under to fit your air locks in and the pros of this include cost it's dirt cheap it's probably the cheapest type of fermenter you can get your hands on usually free if you repurpose something like I did this one here this was a a 6 gallon wine kit I had got what's upon a time and wine juice in it and I'd make wines to be able to see the videos go check that out on my channel as well here but this is uh was repurpose it was free but if you buy them they're a couple bucks apiece we're really dirt cheap huge Pro another pro of these is that they come with a carrying handle it helps make him carry them around especially if you if you're going up and down a flight of stairs like I have to do from my garage where I brewed to my basement here where I actually ferment so that's a big positive for that however there are some cons it's plastic which is a con there's a couple things wrong with plastic one is well it's permeable so you can't oxygen and air will eventually creep in to this and into your beer or your wine and this is not good over the long-term so now it but if you're only making beer and you've only per minute for a couple of weeks no big deal but I'm talking about if your bulk aging like a scotch ale or or a wine of some sort this is not the right type of fermenter for you for that and also that it's since its plastic it's prone to scratching and so these buckets will have to be replaced sort of regularly after so many uses and the reason why is that the more you use these buckets and the more you clean them and the more you stir them everything look the more scuffs and scrapes the inside of these fermenters get which can cause little micro cracks and scratches where bacteria can hide even hide from your sanitizing solutions even though that so that's not good right you want the trust again fermenter to not taint your beer you work all day to brew so I personally avoid plastic wherever possible at least for this purpose and but if you're just getting started it is a great way to get started in a very cheap way to get started another con to this is this size the capacity of most of these food grade plastic buckets out there are five gallons which is if you're doing a five gallon batch of beer is not enough right this one here is a six gallon capacity which I think is the bare minimum you would want for a five gallon batch of beer so if you're using a five gallon bucket scale down your recipes so when the yeast then the krauser and the foam comes up it won't blow out your airlock and make a mess this is a six gallon bucket I would recommend getting those instead and those give you an extra gallon of a headspace or so personally I perform more than 6 gallons of headspace but that's my personal preference and another con is that you can't see inside these things they're opaque now that's a pro as well because you don't want sunlight in your beer as it's fermenting or your wine right but sometimes you want to just see what the progress is so in order to see how things are coming along or to do a hydrometer sample normally you have to open the lid and take a look inside which exposes the air to your to your beer or your wine but you could also add a bottling spigot to the bottom ceders I have a hole right here that I can put a plastic spigot in and drain from there as well so either siphon all these things or use a spigot whichever you prefer next up is the carboy now I'm showing here a glass carboy but there are also plastic ones out there and the plastic ones have many of the same problems and cons that the plastic bucket has a trip to scratching and and having to replace them every so often now I'm going to come off the glass carboy because that's my personal favorite right now it is I'd be using this for years probably 15 17 years or more and it's got a lot of pros and some cons too for example pros glass glass is hard non-porous it's a it's easy to clean it doesn't stain it doesn't transmit any off funky flavors from your last batches of beer to it because once you clean it it's clean it's very robust and it's very practical now one of the downsides to using glass as a material though is that it's because it's easy to break and something this size when it shatters it can hurt you I mean I've seen pictures and heard stories online from others who've dropped these and have had to go to the hospital because of lacerations and cuts across their legs and feet and their arms right and not to mention the big mess everywhere when all the liquid inside spills out everywhere so that so that's a downside now now that could be mitigated with with some add-ons and accessories like I have this thing called the brew hauler strap that fits around this thing so I can carry this thing with two hands between my legs basically and not risk breaking it similar to the plastic buckets a donor big advantage is cost these things are are more expensive than these so for example these might cost you two or three bucks these might cost you a twenty to thirty dollars now that's you know ten times the cost so you could buy a lot of buckets for the cost of one of these yeah but these have to be replaced these do not so I have a lot of glass carboys out all different sizes all the way down from like a half gallon one gallon three gallon five gallon six six six and a half gallon carboys for different needs and purposes for my beer and wine right and and I have two had one break on me and all these years cross my fingers right but there is a downside risk of injury and if they're also somewhat common - I mean these don't exist at every single store you go to a hardware store of course mainly water suppliers or homebrew shops you know usually have these so these are not it's easy to find but they're pretty still still somewhat common and since these are clear glass you can actually monitor the progress of what's going on in here so you can actually visually inspect the fermentation you can actually watch it if you don't or never seen a fermentation take place a very vigorous one it's actually pretty cool to watch it's kind of mesmerizing watching all the yeast and bubbles everything's swirling around in there now now that's also a downside because you don't want the yeast exposed to light because it can skunky beer or your wine and the yeast don't like that right so that's a real simple solution I just wrap this thing in a beach towel and one pro that actually I have never personally done but I've seen me other people out there doing it is that you can do pressure transfers from a carboy at very low pressures beasties are not rated for pressure so that's also a con your risk blowing apart this this thing and shattering glass everywhere if you don't do this right but it is possible to do a pressure transfer from a carboy using one of these carboy caps a racking cane a bottle co2 and a way to input the co2 in here so you can actually put pressure in here to push the beer out of here and into another vessel like your keg or another carboy for example one of the downsides of which I don't see that as a con person because I have a workaround for it is you are required to siphon your beer out of here now you have to siphon the beer out of here because there's no way they had a port or valve under here it's kind of silly to do but that's a real sip of workaround I've talked about this in my all grain home brewing basics video and I show it in every one of my brewing videos is just go get yourself an auto siphon I mean it's capable pump pumps it starts the siphon and off you go number our problem using auto siphon it's actually a combination of a glass carboy and an auto siphon is to me the optimal combination of price versus usefulness out there next up is to Karelia style a keg here and yes it is a keg it is meant for for capping into a kegerator and drinking beer auto but did you also know I guess I assumed that you now know if you haven't already that these could also be used to fermenting you know I've seen people who say that they want stainless steel fermenters so they instantly jump to the bigger conical stainless steels which cost a lot more money or they want to do a pressure transfer much like the fermentis ors here and also that the stainless steel here one can do as well well did you know the kegs are stainless steel and can also do pressure transfers to all for a lot less money you can buy these used Karina's kegs at homebrew shops or online supply stores for probably anywhere from thirty to forty dollars you know which is again not much more than a glass carboy so that's a little bit more expensive but not a whole lot more and it can serve dual purposes you can use a keg as both a keg and it's a fermenter and save on overall equipment costs huge Pro your folks huge Pro huge cost savings right this is one of the you mean with these gas ports on here you can you can do a pressure transfer in or out of a keg you can have multiples of these so you if you do primary and secondary which I don't do secondary I've done a video on that if you haven't seen that yet go check that out too but but if you do you can pressure transfer rack into a second one all without exposing the beer to any oxygen whatsoever which is a huge bonus of closed system transfers so being stainless steel these things are easy to clean they could they take abuse they last forever they're not prone to breaking like glass not prone to scratching like plastic it's a really good all-around material and all good price now if you buy a brand new though getting ready to pay for you know $100 for more for one right but you can find these things used all over the place and because these things are rated for pressure you can do pressure fermentation in these much like you can on the front from at the source or on the spike brewing CF 10 for example so you can actually put a sponging valve on here and I've done a video on how to make a sponging valve go out there and check that out but you can actually ferment in here put a spell on here too to control the max pressure and this thing will ferment to your desired pressure so it will be pressurized and fermented and ready to drink or transfer to another keg and then drink all ready to go so so that's another advantage and if you don't plan on doing pressure transfers you can make up your own or buy attachments that open up the gas port with that that will attach a normal air lock to it or catch a blow-off hose to it right and do a bucket down below there's different ways to configure this for fermenting it also keep out the light which is good for the fermentation process but again you can't see what's going on so that's a minor con with this kind of system however it's also easy to carry serene it's got built-in carry handles now so moving one of these around your house from room to room or up or fight a fight or Donna flight of stairs is it actually really quite easy so that's one of the strengths I think of using kegs that they're stainless steel they're use ones they're dirt cheap got carrying handles you can do pressure permutations all of this for a lot less money than the price of a stay up ferment asaurus in fact you could buy several of these for the cost of one of those now there's two downsides to this though right one is that it's got a limited capacity again it's about a five and half gallon max right so if you're doing a five gallon batch of recipe you're you're gonna have to use a blow-up hose or skilled on your recipe or if you or figure out a way to get some headspace in there so you can use two kegs actually so if you have a five-gallon recipe and you want to put two enough gallons into kegs whatever that's fine too it's still cheaper than one ferment asaurus or one catalyst for one fast ferment for example and another downside is that because you're going to do your fermentation in here all the true banned yeast is gonna settle down to the bottom now there's a very long didn't dip tube in here that goes all the way down to the bottom very bottom to pick up the beer for when it sees it as a keg well you may want to clip that up a couple of inches to get it above the height of the troop so when you do wreck off it later you won't pick up the troop in all that yeast so in that case if you repurpose this as a keg then you're gonna leave a couple inches of beer in the bottom of your cake unless you have a second spare dip tube which you can get as well so just keep that in mind the final type of fermenter is the conical form NR as you can see here I've got four examples behind me here three plastic one stainless steel and I've done individual review videos of each of these on my channel already in the past six months or so so if you haven't seen them and are curious about what I think about the catalyst the ferment asaurus the fast ferment or the CF ten by Spike brewing go check out those individual videos but as a whole as a category or style of fermenter the advantage of these is that they're designed as fermenters the the conical shapes help help funnel the troub and the yeast down a chute that can be then purged and to remove that troupe from the vessel to have a cleaner fermentation it eliminates the need to rack to a secondary fermenter if that's what you do personally if you see me talk about this in the past I don't do secondary fermenter so I think they're a waste of time personally and I have reasons for that did a video on that go check that out if you want but if you are the type that that still wants to do that this eliminates that by allowing you to purge that and also it allows you to to harvest your yeast for pitching it into us to a second batch which will save some amount of money over time so those are all pros and because they're specifically designed to ferment beer a number of these have add-ons or specialty functionality that makes them even more useful for example you can do closed pressure transfers in some of these so the fermented source could be a closed pressure fermentation and transfers the like CF ten can do closed fermentations and open transfers or even closed if you bring up your own hoses the right way right so there's some extra bonuses and some of them have even more specialty features than that including sample ports let's see this one's got a sample port to keep short here it's kind of caught up in here but it's a sample port for example right no not all of them have them so it's not you know a standard nice thing or anything so they do have some advantages however they have disadvantages too right number one that comes to mind is cost right I already walked you through your two dollar plastic bucket your $20.00 carboy your $40.00 use keg right so these are all cost a lot more money yeah so you know a couple hundred bucks here maybe 130 bucks here another 100 bucks plus accessories which can add up the closer to two hundred dollars and the stainless steel ones are hundreds of dollars even upwards of a thousand for the larger sized ones right so these are so that's a huge caucus cost constraint for those getting in the brewing and even those who currently brew it you know it does make you pause and think do you really need a conical fermenter and in my opinion unless you plan on harvest feast no you don't need a conical ferment at all you know they are nice they are cool and some of them look real nice nice and shiny right and it makes me feel more like an actual real Brewer right but truth is it doesn't do much extra for your beer really I mean you know all the beers that came out of all of these fermenters here tastes the same as the beers that came out of my glass carboy yeah you know it's this there's really been no difference in taste so you have to ask yourself the question why am i spending $100 $200 $600 or more for a fermenter to do the same thing that you can do with a $2.00 bucket and a $10 auto siphon or a $20 carboy in a ten-dollar auto siphon it's a you could buy several car boys for the cost of any one of these and have a lots of beer on tap or or under different stages of fermentation or wines bulk aging in any of these other containers you know it's so that's a huge con another con is that although many of them cost a lot more money than a plastic bucket they're still plastic except for the stainless steel ones but they're plastic they'll have to be replaced over time as well they'll get scratch they'll get dinged though you know it's it's just how it is so you spend a hundred or two hundred dollars for a plastic conical you may end up in a few years having to rebuy it again and then you know just the price just adds up so you have to ask yourself personally what advantage do you get or do I get out of a plastic conical fermenter or a stainless steel into versus what I get out of a fermentation vessel and and some of the cons are similar to some of the cons as the other cheaper options right I mean some are Platt again some are transparent they that you can see through some of them you can cover some have accessories to cover them from from light so that's all finding the nd there's always workaround but those still cost extra money too unless you just wrap everything in a towel which I've done in the past too I mean it's just things to consider cleaning it's not any easier with conical z' I found it found out the hard way it's like I actually that's right after having cleaned all four of these behind me here and I still think the easiest vessel to clean is my carboy so I hope you found this helpful describing the different types of fermenters out there I hope it I hope it helps you make it a better and more informed purchasing decision when it comes to buying a fermenter I hope it answers a lot of the questions I've been getting about fermenters over the past several months and I hope you learn something I hope it helps you out good luck shopping if you like this video give me a thumbs up folks subscribe if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet check out my facebook my website and feel free to donate to me at the links all down below to help fund this channel and keep it going it does take a lot of work to - to do videos like this every little dollar or penny I get is much appreciated and it makes me feel like I'm doing something useful and giving back to you and it makes us all better off for it so thank you very much talk to you next time see you later thanks for watching be sure to check out other videos on my youtube channel and don't forget to subscribe [Music]

Channel: BEER-N-BBQ by Larry

Views: 217,734

Keywords: homebrew, recipe, how to, tutorial, instructions, home brew, homebrewing, fermentation, ferment, beer, fermenting, wine making, winemaking, brewing, conical fermenters, plastic carboy, glass carboy, bucket, wine, fermenters, types of fermenters, types, fermenter type, fermenter types, style

Id: 82nW4dsySkc

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2017