Making a dry hop vessel - DIY hop gun/cannon/etc

[brain medicine]

so in the interest of saving some dough, i've been trying to think of a way to do a hop gun for cheap. here's the general idea-

15bbl brewhouse, so at 3# per that's 45lbs of hops, basically one box worth of volume.

so we get some sort of conical- maybe a homebrew 10gal stainless. we'd take the blowoff hose from the FV and run it into the top of the hop conical, then another hose from the cone into starsan. i figure about a days worth of fermenting should purge the hops pretty damn well just by the volume of pure co2 flowing through it.

then you could just seal it up until its time for dry hop. at that point we just use it like a normal hop gun/cannon/etc. as long as we purge the hoses well, we should be damn near o2 free when the hops go into FV.

anybody see any problems with the general process? i considered the possibliity of krauzen getting into blowoff and down the tube into hops, but as long as its anaerobic i dont see that as real problem. it'd just be a bit of (dead?) yeast going back into the beer when we dry hop.

and i dont see clogging/overpressurization as a problem any more than in normal fermenting process. assuming the hop conical has its own PRV then that'd be two (FV and hop conical) that would need to plug for a blowout to happen.

i think some of the homebrew vendors will customize it for you in terms of port sizes, locations, etc. and id assume it could be done for less than a grand.

seem reasonable? any issues/problems im missing?

[CPESystems]

How are you going to transfer the hops?

Sorry if I missed something but how are you going to transfer the hops from the 10 gallon to the 15 BBL FV?

[brain medicine]

By pump if the goal is to recirculate. Or with co2 if its just for pushing into the tank.

[CPESystems]

A few problems

I see a few problems. first the 45 lbs of hops will fill the 10 gallon FV right to the top. When you try to pump beer through it to move the hops in to your 15 BBL FV there will not be enough liquid and the pellets will turn in to a gluey mess that will never pump out. You could do it, but you will only be able to do about 10 lbs at a time, purging with CO2 between each load.

Second, if you try to blow the hops out with CO2 you will use an inordinate amount of CO2. Normally hop cannons like this are quite small and you do multiple loads and the biggest complaint about them is they will use a lot of CO2.

Finally, a cheap 10 gallon FV from a home brew shop will not be designed for the CO2 pressure you need to blow the hops. You will have to close off the PRV and then you will probably blow the lid right off of the poor thing. Take a look at the manufactured hop cannons/guns and you will see very heavy lids with multiple lock down clamps.



Here is some more information you might find useful.

https://www.cpesystems.com/blogs/news/hoppers-hop-guns-cannons-torpedos-is-anyone-else-confused

[brain medicine]

We know our design works, weve already used a similar set up on smaller scale. The rig im describing, as currently built (jerry riggedj, seems extremely similar to your hop induction system.

My main reason for posting is to see if im missing any potential problems with having the fermenter purge the vessel with fermentation gas for total purity, maybe volatiles blown off during ferment, bits of krauzen, etc.

With a regard to size, our vendor in china makes brites at about a grand in 2-3bbl size, fully customizable.

As to co2 use, we only use to empty the vessel. Gravity does the work in a neat little trick.

[jcmcdowell]

We have something similar from Sungood. It's a 15 gallon uninsulated tank with a filter on the bottom and a heavy ass lid with about a dozen clamps.

There is three 1/4" ports on top. We use one to purge air when filling, another for a pressure gauge, and the third has a corny fitting for pressurizing/with co2 to empty after recirculating.

We use a small pump on the lower output to the racking arm and a hose to a middle port on our 10bbl fermenters.

We has them remove a sight glass.

We recirc for about 3 days of and on.

It works fine. I wish we had gotten a 30 gallon tank instead on casters.

This tank was less than a $1000.

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