Good morning. As you have seen, I have been using FF fermentors since 2016 - love them. And, employ nine. What I can do is tell you how I used them and use them now. How I used them: I no longer make kits but when I did I found it best to use a muslin bag for all adjuncts (skins and chips). However, if a kit included oak dust I didn't add that to the must as it surely clogged the collection ball. I found that the collection ball easily held most of the fall out with few exceptions. Most notable exceptions where "big" Cabernet kits and one Super Tuscan but mostly only emptied the collection ball once at carboy transfer. I didn't use sorbate or any clearing agents opting for time to do the clearing. Here's an example of notes from an actual ferment:
RJS Hightail Merlot started on 1/21/19, OG 1.112, FG .993, added dry skins and heavy oak chips to muslin bag, RC212 yeast, (1/26/19 SG is 1.025, 1/27/19 SG is 1.019, 1/28 is 1.013, 1/29 is 1.007, 1/30 is 1.003, 1/31pm is 0.996, 2/1 is 0.995, 2/2 is 0.993), muslin bag removed on 3/9/2019, bulk aged in carboy with 2 spirals, barrel aged 7/1/2019, bottled 5/2/2020.
How I use the FF fermentors now is for secondary fermentation. I only use frozen or fresh grapes now and do my primary fermentation in stainless steel vats. I transfer to the FF for secondary. Here's a recent example:
Frozen Malbec Rattlesnake Hills from winegrapesdirect.com, started 3/15/2020, 5 buckets, added Opti-Red, Rouge Tannin, and Lallyzme EX (a very small amount. Will add EX-V on Wednesday after it arrives), added 150gm of French oak cubes to must, 3/17/2020 must temp is 60 degrees. I pitched the yeast - UVA Ferm BDX. 3/19/2020, I added the CH16 package in whole. Cap is nice and thick. Surprising amount of condensation on the underside of the fermenting pot lid. I opted out of adding the EX-V as I added pectinate a few days ago and the extraction seems to be at a good level. I’ll save the EX-V for the next batch. Temp is 80 degrees. 3/20/2020, nice cap this morning. Beginning to smell more and more like wine. 3/24/2020, I decided to press. SG was down to 1.001 this morning so this afternoon I moved it to conicals. Learned some things. I had 11 gallons of wine via the pump. I had another 7 gallons from the press, 3 of which were free run. The other 4 came from pressing. Note: when I do this again, use a carboy to catch the wine from the press drain. Just checked the gravity: .997, activity in the airlock. 4/21/2020, second fermentation done, transferred to barrels.
Hope this helps. PM if you want a phone call. I'm happy to chat on the phone.
