Fermentation temperature control

jgalak · Joined: 06 Jun 2015 Posts: 19

I've been looking at various ways to chill a fermentation chamber to be able to brew lagers, and ran across this product:

http://www.ssbrewtech.com/collections/ftss/products/ftss-temp-control-for-7-gallon-bucket-chronical

For the price, seems pretty nice, except the whole ice thing is kind of a pita. I know I'd forget to check the ice levels, and constantly getting more ice will just annoy me.

So here's a thought: get a small fridge (like a dorm room fridge), put a pot of water in it. Put a coil in the pot (perhaps a repurposed immersion cooler - I'll have a spare one once I get a counterflow setup going), run plumbing through the door to the temp controller. Leave fridge plugged in.

Any reason that wouldn't work?

luke_l · Joined: 30 Oct 2014 Posts: 63 Location: Kingston, ON

Wouldn't work very well with water since you can't get it cold enough to really work, but people do that with glycol in a freezer. They put a bath of it in a freezer (I think that maybe a coil in-line with it in the freezer helps too for heat exchange) and pump it, switching the pump on/off to maintain temps. Other people do the same thing, except they hack an air conditioning unit to put the coil directly into a glycol bath. It's on my list of things to do...

jgalak · Joined: 06 Jun 2015 Posts: 19

Hmm. I actually have a spare freezer, but I don't know if that system is rated for glycol.... Will have to investigate.

EDIT: Yup, it specifically support glycol. This sounds like an easier path than building a Peltier effect system.

luke_l · Joined: 30 Oct 2014 Posts: 63 Location: Kingston, ON

Ya, I think that there are two decent ways to do fermentation temperature control... sticking your fermentor in a fridge, or some sort of glycol system. Everything else is a PITA.

**kal** · Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 11:59 pm Post subject:

Some thoughts here on conicals and fermenters in general, including chilling, in case you haven't seen it:

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/brew-day-step-by-step?page=11

Kal