The FastFerment: A Hands-On Review

hi everyone in this video I'm going to review the past permit conical fermenter so keep watching [Music] now I have this faster man here it's brand new I just put together I'm going to use it in a batch of beer I'm making this weekend I'm making a hypervisor and I'm going to put it through the paces I'm going to walk through this for the very first time using this system with you watching as well and I want to give you my thoughts while I go through it and maybe apply some final thoughts at the end but other than that let's get moving so first off the primary piece of this thing the actual conical fermenter this thing is made out of the HDPE plastic and it is conical and it goes down to what they call the Union valve and a collection ball and the whole point of this is that the yeast and truth will settle out slide down the wall and collect inside the collection ball where you can then turn this off remove it empty it clean it and put it back on or putting a new one egg on to collect the yeast at the end to harvest your yeast or to collect more troub it's the same idea as any other a conical fermenter all right so some of things that it comes with well here's a dial thermometer that can use to monitor the fermentation temperature comes with a screw on lid with a rubber grommet and a hole that accommodates a three-piece airlock that also comes with it you know and it also comes with some mounting brackets which used to mount on a wall so if I were to take these brackets let's say in I'm on them a apart I can actually hang my fermenter via these pivot holes on the side on each side of here and it'll just lock in place I'm not going to do that I don't have the room for it in my house I don't have to need to put holes in my wall it's not my thing so luckily unfortunately what they also offer is a standalone stand that you can drop it in and it'll sit on the floor on a counter top or wherever you want and that's what I'm going to use for this video and you can also buy a number of accessories for this thing you buy additional collection balls you can buy a carrying handle that that fits around the fermenter and carries it like a brew holder does a carboy right and you know also also an option is this front sampling port here that you can install it does not come with it by default it's also seen in accessory as well so it comes with some accessories and some ways to work with it which i think is kind of interesting it it gives you some flexibility but I think I walked through this quick enough so let's get on with this sanitizing this thing was pretty easy I just added my sanitizer my star stand solution which is my preferred sanitizer into the fermenter and swish it around left and right side ways upside down back upright again go ahead put it back on the stand and open the valve and let the collection ball fill up as well and let the helping sit for several minutes so with the foam in the solution on side and then I pour it out into a another container for your reason it later during the budae when it came to film this thing up for my brew kettle the height of this thing was it was a lot taller basically than my carboys that I like to use so I actually had a search around for some boxes or crates or wherever to lift my boil kettle up higher than the height of the fermenter so that was something new I to do this time around but although was other than that I worked okay the the hose the cipher worked just fine and when it came to aerating this thing no probably all I just use my oxygen tank in my aeration stone and bubble that up really good that no problem there and when it came time to pitch the yeast so this was a nice feature the size of the lid is pretty big diameter which is just fine that I can just pour my yeast starter into the fermenter without having these a funnel so that saved me a step of having the sanitizer funnel which I thought was kind of nice and of course putting the airlock on was real simple to adjust screw the lid back on and insert the airlock with my sanitizer solution right in right in the hole there and there was no problem so that part was really easy when it came to transporting it from my garage where I brewed to my basement where I like to ferment that was it didn't go so well although I successfully did transfer it down there but it was a little bit of a problem even with the carrying strap accessory we hook that around the fermenter it doesn't hook around the stand itself so when you lift the fermenter up out of the stand the stand stays right there on the ground well now you're carrying this very heavy fermenter full of full of beer and you're trying to figure out what to do with it you have no pre hands to move the stand so you need a an extra person to help you I didn't have a next person to help me in this video so I provide and reach down and I tried to pick up the stand with my fingertips while I'm holding the rest of the vessel my palms and that was a very uncomfortable and kind of risky to do and and I made it downstairs but it was not a good experience Here I am down in my basement about 24 hours later and the fermentations are well underway got some foam going on here so positing gots an airlock activity the aroma in the air from the other yeast fermenting is filling the room and temperature here on the little thermometer here showing about 68 to 70 degrees a little high for what I wanted to shoot for I was shooting for low to mid-60s but it's not a problem it's how it is in the summertime here in my basement it's no fault of the fermenter so we'll be back in a few days for the next step one thing I kind of liked about this fermenter it was the opaqueness of the material to keep the light out but it was also the same reason why I didn't like the material he has to help keep some little light out but it wasn't completely blacked out I mean life still got through even even in my basement with my fluorescent lights overhead coming on and off wasn't too concerned about it when I do my carboys I usually wrap it in a towel and put in the corner it's completely blocked out this one was kind of almost there but not quite there but at the same time because they all picked the material I could not monitor visually with my own eyes the fermentation progress I could all I had to use was the airlock and the hydrometer reading if I were to take one which I don't normally do I just don't bother doing that usually so it was kind of a guessing game now one of the advantages though of that sampling port accessory that you can attach this thing was that you can actually pull samples and get your hydrometer readings to check for permutation completeness which is a great workaround it's just unfortunate that you have to pay for that workaround so that was sort of a mixed I've mixed opinions on that one five days have passed since brew day it is now time to change my collection ball my primary fermentation is now complete and I am going to either to rinse wash sanitize that reattach the same ball or I'll wash and sanitize the spare ball I got either way let's get going well go ahead and turn off the valve all right unscrew the collection ball here can't do the whole thing you gotta kind of hold it put it looks like alright I'll have my sanitized law and other pieces here and let it rip I dumped the contents of the collection ball into the Pyrex measuring cup a few hours ago and let it settle so you can see here that well it's about three cups that collection ball can hold about three cups about PI and a half's worth of food there and this is mostly tube right here settled out with a little later liquid on top and while we're doing pretty good here it's time to take the beer folks it's been about two and a half weeks since I started brewing this beer it's been fermenting this whole time on the floor right off camera here next to my feet I had raised the faster man here over my shoulder to the top of the bar to use gravity to fill the keg through the hose that supposedly came with it but let me talk about that hose for a minute here this is the hose that came with the fast ferment it's about two feet long completely useless it doesn't it's not long enough to go from the testament down to the kegger bottles down below at all I don't even know why they would even ship a two foot hose in the kid at all I mean why not just save some money charge a couple of dollars less and tell you to go buy your own because I had to go to a horror store and buy my own template like the hose that I cut down to a five feet so it cost an extra $10 on top of the hundred dollars I would have paid for this in order to get the functionality I need to to do this task as you can see off to the side here the hose is way over here soaking in some sanitizer now the hose I purchased not-not-not this hose so both sides from that I'm ready to kick and as you can see my cake is right in the middle here upside down it was sanitized and now it's dripping dry and I am ready to cake so let's get going with this one thing I do like about this detriment is their sampling port accessory that you can buy as an add-on and attach to the faster mount and this thing serves a couple a couple useful purposes over the course of the fermentation for starters well it's fermenting and starts to slow down and the airlock activity slows to a crawl it's very difficult to gauge visually at least with your eyes of the activity of the fermentation going on because you'll take plastic here which is good that keeps blight out but also keeps your own eyes out you can't see what's going on without taking the lid off well this thing is the option of getting a hydrometer at any point that you can then test to test your specific gravity with and see how well the for the fermentation progressing now me I normally just I'm patient I can wait a couple weeks or more for my fermentations to complete so I did not get around to doing it this batch but that is a nice nice option I have now finally when it comes time to bottle I could take a hydrometer reading from the hose that's going to go into the keg but since I have the option I'm going to go ahead and fill this thing up to take a hydrometer reading now just like that that's pretty color too this is my hypervisor that I making a video on as well it may already be out or may not be out just yet it'll be up soon either way but this is a hypervisor that I started making and it got pretty good color there mmm I can't wait to taste this let's remove this collection ball again so turn off the valve okay and I'm going to unscrew this thing okay move this now I'm going to attach the volumen here just snug it up sure doesn't leak now in a cave the kegging I get mixed opinions on this as well the for one the hose requires a half inch ID hose and I don't have half inch ID hoses it usually and around all my home folding equipment is set up for 3/8 ID hoses for transfers like this or or smaller for other functions so I had a so I was officially happy when I heard that it came with a 1/2 inch ID hose but when I opened the box and saw that the hose was only 2 feet long mm-hm was it really kind of a useful thing I actually ended up just going to the hardware store and coughing up another 8 to 10 bucks for a 10-foot length of hose and cut it down to 5 feet and kind of disappointment there so so you know budget for that as well when you if you're considering buying this thing and go out to buy your own hose which respect that you do over time anyway as hoses get very you out by replacing the hoses but if it offers to send you a hose in the Box in a box and that hoses useless then I just done that was confused by that why would I do in the first place also this half inch ID hose kind of kind of Concerned me because when I attached it to the bottling hose barb and open the valve to let the beer flow through it rushed right through this thing and started foaming up in the bottom of my keg and started you know introducing oxygen to my finished beer which is anyone who's a homebrew knows that it is a bad thing that have happened and so luckily I had the little flow restrictor clamp I was able to right away get on it and slow the rate down and slowly fill it up which which was okay ultimately but it was an eye-opener at first it was kind of shocker when I saw it rushing out there like that I thought wow this'll Philip in about ten seconds but I thought oh no my beers will be oxidized as a result so just keep that in mind use that hose clamp controlled the flow rate now a positive thing with this device that it came with a three piece airlock now I have both types of airlocks these little s-shaped ones and these 3-piece ones I use them both interchangeably depending on what I have free and available and nearby but I did realize that this was advantage with this pass permit when you put the three piece on the top of the fermenter and you go to open the valve to drain it out do your keg it didn't suck my sanitizer solution or water out of the airlock and into the beer like what would happen if you have an S shape there marelok so they did consider that when they ship this three-piece airlock with the system that was definitely the right call now when it came to cleaning this thing afterwards it was a bit of a chore for me when I went to compare it to how I cleaned glass carboys with a carboy brush or a carboy clean dry attachment that's actually pretty straightforward and easy and principle to do this thing because it's odd shape and the fact that I had the Vere stone and this crud formed this ring around the inside edge of the fermenter I would normally just scrape that off scrub it off whatever or brush it off however the instructions for the betterment and I agree with these instructions by the way I'm not saying they're wrong I'm just saying that because this is an HDPE plastic it is not tough is you know just pick up a five-gallon bucket and go and try to scratch that with your fingernail or a sharp edge of something it'll scratch right and it's and that's the same material here and so I couldn't use a bra I could use a scrub pad well how do I get it up with a soft cloth or sponge I tried it wouldn't come off so I ended up having to put this thing back in the stand soak it with some PBW or some other type of cleaner solution fill it all the way up past that line which was wasting a lot of water in my opinion and it's soaked for several hours and it eventually did come off and I was able to wipe it off with a sponge eventually and then I to pick it up or turn the valve and drain it and dumped it all out and that was just like a heck of a lot more work just clean a glass carboy but that was that's just my opinion okay so my final thoughts on this overall not bad I mean it's a just a plastic conical fermenters like others out in the market and it does a fine job at what it claims to do and there are some drawbacks there's no pretty much anywhere in life of people it's it's like you pay a certain amount of money you get what you pay for there's no a whole lot of cost or time savings out there it's usually a lot of trade-offs between all your safe time here but you spend more time there and this is no different with this fermenter let's just keep that in mind it may solve some problems for you along the way in terms of your brew day or your fermentation process or whatever but it also adds challenges as well so just keep that in mind but overall not bad for a hundred bucks however you have to take the account the extra cost for a for a natural hose some of these accessories add to the cost of this thing and that would add the total price to be well over a hundred dollars and I didn't actually total it all up that I might put it on the screen here for you to see what some of the prices being shown are for some of these products but but take that as it may and go with this so anyway I hope you liked this video I hope it was helpful for you I hope you learned something please like this video if you liked it subscribe to my channel if you haven't subscribed check out my facebook page my Twitter feed and my website all at the same time there's and and if you feel so inclined please feel feel free to donate at my PayPal link down in the video description down below and I will talk to you all next time 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: 63,385

Keywords: homebrew, recipe, how to, tutorial, instructions, fast fermenter, fastferment, fermenter, fermentation, home brew, home brewing, homebrewing, stand, spigot, sample port, sampling port, carrying strap, thermometer, extra collection ball, collection ball, fastbrewing, fast brewing

Id: Ei2Lkp2L_Mk

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2017