Just tried Farra Brewery, anyone else had experience to share!!

[david holden]

Hi,

just fired up 1st brew using the farra home brewery from farra engineering in dunedin, great and easy, put a burner under the mash tun and this helped maintain a boil temp of 66 degrees, will put in a wort pump as well to circulate the mash to maintain temp.

thinking of getting a conical fermenter from them with a cooling jacket to maintain the fermenting temp, anyone had any experince with one!!

dave 

[Ralph]

I think you will find it is Farra Engineering rather than Farro.

I have a 60L conical from them and it works well. Mine does not have a jacket... but a jacket on a vessel along with a temperature control system would be great.

The fermentor itself works fine and is very functional.

[david holden]

thanks for that, will be investing in one i think as plastic on a heat bed is way too dodgy to get an ac

curate ferment!!

[Ralph]

To be honest I ferment much of the time in a converted fridge with a 40W heater in the bottom in plastic containers. The beer stays at a temperature within a degree simply from the ambient air temperature around the container. If it needs cooling the fridge cools the temperature down. 

As far as I can tell the beer out of the plastic containers tastes the same as the beer out of the stainless fermentor... but then I am controlling the temperature of the stainless fermentor in the same manner (bung the whole thing inside a temperature controlled fridge with a heating element in the bottom).

The conical is nicer to use and easier to clean though, and you can dump the yeast sediment (or hops if you are dry hopping) out the bottom of the cone. It has a nice racking arm so you can take samples and can take beer out or if you wanted you could use the conical as a pressure vessel and serve from the conical... If you have the cash the conicals are nice!

[Jonny Gritt]

Just trying out my new conical fermenter now, about to draw it off for bottle conditioning, but it doesn't  to want to come.  Any tips?

 

[Ralph]

I assume you are taking it out the racking arm halfway up? You may have hops or yeast stuck in the racking arm? Best best is to either pressurise the vessel to force the blockage out or to blow something back up the racking arm pipe - but this might contaminate the beer.

I have only ever had problems getting beer out of the racking arm when I have had massive dry hop amounts. At other times there has often been an air-lock tho. Probably from the fermentation putting CO2 bubbles up in there. If you do not have much in the fermentor (25L or so) there may not be enough pressure from the liquid and you may need to use something to initially draw some liquid out...

[Dene McDonald]

Would love a Farra system but can't justify the cost... but would be interested to see comments. The only stuff I've found online was early prototypes which had a few small issues.

[Steve b]

Hi there check out this link I have the 60l conical and its great bang for buck

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum/topics/ss-conical-fermenters

[Jonny Gritt]

Ralph; great advice...thank you. It feels like a pressure issue; though perhaps compounded by a blockage. I'll let you know how I go.

Thanks again.

JG