Recently I had purchase a 7 gallon stainless steel conical fermenter and was in heaven until I realized that it did not fit in my converted chest freezer / fermentation chamber! So you know what that means; time to grab the cut saw and go all A-Team on the conical fermenter.
In the above photo, the stainless steel conical fermenter on the right is the 7 gallon unit that I am converting to fit into the chest freezer. I am adding a temperature control unit to the stainless steel conical fermenter on the left and will cover that project in a future blog. So to start, I had to replace the lid on fermenter with the lid from one of my stainless steel brew buckets. Because the stainless steel brew bucket lid is flat, it saved me a few inches and let me connect a stainless steel elbow pipe fitting so that I can use a blow-off tube as opposed to an airlock which save me another couple of inches. With those simple modifications, I was just about there. Next I measured the clearance space from the lower valve to the floor and I had approximately 4 inches of clearance. So I trimmed each leg down approximately 3 inches as you can see in the photo at the top of the page.
The modifications to my stainless conical fermenter worked perfectly and now it easily fits in my chest freezer and I am once again a happy man. You can see the photo below. If all goes well, I will brew my first batch with this fermenter this weekend and will let you guys know how it goes, but so far I have been very happy with the quality. I gave it a good cleaning and there were no leaks, all of the welds are perfect and the valves and fittings are all very high quality.
If you are looking to purchase one, they are currently available for just $395!
Click Here For the 7 Gallon Stainless Steel Conical Fermenter
If you need on of the stainless steel brew bucket lids, they can be purchased here for $23
Stainless Steel Brew Bucket Conical Fermenter Lid
What was your final height? With the flat top can you push the beer out with co2?