Why Use a Conical Fermenter?

What Is A Conical Fermenter?

A conical fermenter is essentially a cone-shaped fermenter that significantly streamlines the homebrewing process, saving you time, money and storage space. Whether you’ve been brewing for a while and are looking to step up your homebrew game OR you’re just starting your homebrewing hobby, a conical fermenter is easy to use and can help you brew your best tasting beers.

Most brewers begin their homebrewing journey with a carboy or even a humble bucket, but conical fermenters are becoming more popular and more accessible for first time homebrewers or for experienced brewers looking to step up their homebrew game.

While carboys and buckets have flat bottoms, a conical fermenter is shaped like a cone. Used by commercial breweries, conical fermenters act like giant sediment funnels. During fermentation, spent hops and inactive yeast settle in the cone or in an attached collection container instead of at the bottom of your fermenter.

Because beer must be separated from sediment, this traditionally involves sanitizing another fermenter, siphoning beer off the sediment and transferring into the new fermenter. Again, on bottling day, beer must be carefully siphoned from the secondary fermenter into a sanitized bottling bucket and transferred, yet again, into bottles. That’s a lot of transfers and a lot of time wasted.

Conicals eliminate these tedious, and often messy, transfers by simply removing sediment from the bottom of the fermenter instead.

DEGONG stainless steel fermentation tanks

Advantages of conical fermenters

Single-Vessel Fermentation

Adding secondary fermentation to the brewing process is a game-changer. It allows brewers to flex their creative muscles with new tools. Elevate flavor with extended aging, dry hopping, or additions of oak, fruit—anywhere your imagination takes you. Achieve better clarity, less sediment, and smoother mouthfeel, all by simply transferring your beer to secondary.

Unfortunately, two-step fermentation in a bucket or carboy equals extra siphoning, opening the door to infection and oxidation. If only there were a way to do it with just one vessel...

Conical fermenters are uniquely shaped to eliminate transferring. The funnel-shaped bottom separates and collects unwanted sediment. At the end of primary, you just pop open the valve and dump the sediment, leaving only pure beer behind, ready for secondary.

When fermentation is complete, conical fermenters make it easy to transfer your beer directly to a keg.

Minimize Risk of Oxidation and Infection

Oxidation and Infection are a brewer's worst nightmare. You wait for weeks, only to taste your final beer and find it riddled with off-flavors. Every time you transfer your brew, you remove it from the sealed-off safety of its home vessel, thus exposing it to contaminants and oxygen. Even the most vigilant brewers fall into unintended traps.

Enter conical fermenters. By performing both primary and secondary fermentation in one vessel, your risk of spoilage plummets. No need to transfer? No exposure to the outside elements.

Better Beer

There's a reason professional brewers choose conical: efficiency. Single-vessel fermentation is the single-most streamlined version of homebrewing possible. When you streamline fermentation, you eliminate risk. The result: better beer.

Save & Reuse Yeast

Easiest way to save money on brewing? Reuse your yeast. Liquid beer yeast costs from $8 - $17. Rather than buying a new packet for every batch, why not make the most out of the one you already have?

By letting you dump trub out of the bottom, conical fermenters make harvesting yeast as easy as turning a valve. You'll collect healthy, viable yeast that can be easily isolated, cleaned, and stored for up to a week. Don't waste money on buying the same strain over and over again. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Less Cleaning & Sanitation

Need we say more? Cleaning is (almost) everyone's least favorite part of brewing. It goes without saying that the fewer vessels you use, the fewer vessels you clean. So get in on single-vessel fermentation and get out of extra scrubbing.