chiller - what do I do now?

[edit1now]

2 of the 1/2"-1/2" BSP variety please?

[edit1now]

Chiller and newly-insulated fermenter in use:


The latest Hefeweizen is getting on with it, at 22°C, in case the warmer temperature make more esters.

[rsw]

edit1now - looks like you have a good setup there.

Although I've only done two kits so far, I would at some point like to progress to AG, and fermentation temperature is something I'd like to be able to control. The setup that you have with the beer line cooler looks good, however the coolers look quite bulky (and pricey), anyway it got me thinking...

Could I use our existing freezer to do the same job as the beer line cooler.. My thinking was this:

Pipe could be mounted through the freezer wall, through a container of ice, back through the freezer wall, via a pump, then through the fermenting beer and returned back through the freezer. Liquid (water + antifreeze/something that won't freeze) would be pumped around the system and cool the beer. The pump would be connected to a temperature controller, which could also be connected to a heating belt.

My thought was that the freezer is on all the time anyway, therefore this way could be more economical and take up less space (which we are short of).

Does this sound like it could work? or have I missed something obvious that would make this impractical/useless (apart from the fiancee not liking the freezer being modified!). Even if it would work I doubt I'll get around to trying it for quite a while...

[RabMaxwell]

hello rsw i use a beer cooler like edit1now work's very good.

I have thought about doing what you are thinking about doing in the past & i reckon it would work well.The problem is if you are going to use Antifreeze & use a heat exchanger in your fermenter it needs to be food grade glycol incase you have a leak .I have tried to pump glycol in the past & it's not that easy to pump as it's quite thick you are better off using salt water instead.

[edit1now]

I think one reason why the beer line chiller system works quite well, without major hassles, for a number of JBK members, is that the water in the chiller doesn't usually freeze (unless there's something wrong with the thermostat). There should be a lump of ice in the bath, but most of the water is still runny. The thermostat is set (by the manufacturer) to achieve this - the water in my chiller stays about 0.5C.

If you had a big fridge, I would wonder about a tank of water (several gallons?) which the fridge would keep at 4C for you, and you could have a set of copper coils in there, for circulating cold water to your fermenter.

Costs - my big chiller cost 99p, not working. I replaced the thermostat (£18) and it now has a Fortex TC-10 (£35 incl. P&P, plus a box to put it in, some kettle leads, and some sockets and fuseholders - say £20), 1 1/2 metres of 8mm copper tube (say £2), some John Guest fittings (say £10), a couple of metres of 3/8" beer line (70p), 1 1/2 Lidl sleeping mats (£7) as insulation for the £14 Youngs budget fermenter. £89.69, not including odd bits of wire, hot-gun glue or gaffer tape. I won the old Boots heating belt from somewhere - I don't know how much a new replacement would be.

Did anyone say this is a cheap hobby if you're not a gadget-head...?

[RabMaxwell]

Hello edit1now what temperature are you getting down too after you crash cool your fermenter.

This is only my second batch since i started using my TC-10 they are very good indead . I am only getting my 120 litre brews down to 4oc in this hot weather that's good enough for me though as i never brew lagers

[edit1now]

I haven't done any crash cooling yet. I'm likely to try another Munich Dunkel soon, and that will probably get the SAB-Miller style lager curve (I can't find the details to put up right now) which is said to accelerate lagering quite a lot - something like a week at 5C then up to 17 and then down to 2C. Following your(?) comments I'll use the Maxi 310 for the dark lager as it has a larger ice bank and more powerful chiller. The Maxi 110 will do the next Hoegaarden-type orangey thing, whioch won't need crash cooling.

[rsw]

I have thought about doing what you are thinking about doing in the past & i reckon it would work well.The problem is if you are going to use Antifreeze & use a heat exchanger in your fermenter it needs to be food grade glycol incase you have a leak .I have tried to pump glycol in the past & it's not that easy to pump as it's quite thick you are better off using salt water instead.

I thought that if joints could be kept to a minimum there would be less chance of leaks and if joints could be kept outside of the beer and freezer, any leaks would not cause too much of a problem either. I would think salt water would be the most convenient thing to use. If I have some spare time I'll give this some more thought, but for now it'll just have to remain an idea.

[RabMaxwell]

Better having a salty taste in your beer than ending up dead.

[grmills]

Why not use vodka for coolant? As long as you've got sufficient volume fermenting it should still be drinkable - but you might want to warn your guests

[edit1now]

An update: I've now insulated a second Young's budget fermenter, with three layers of camping mat (two green and one silver, from Lidl), and installed the Mark 2 lid, where the 3/8" stem to 3/4" BSP thing is held on with a threaded bit of plastic:



and the Mark 2 cooling coil which has a double bend, to achieve a similar surface area to a 22mm cooling spear:



Here are the two fermenters running in series off the Maxi 110, when I wasn't sure if the Maxi 310 was working properly, one with a Belgian Wit and the other with a Vienna-style Alt:



Both insulated jackets (the original gaffer-taped one and the second hot-gun-glued one) now undo down the side, and are held closed with polyprop webbing and Fastex buckles. This is a great boon, as it was very difficult to get the original jacket off the FV over the heating belt and other protrusions. I needed to be able to fill the FV without the jacket, to see how much wort I'd collected from the (approximate) printed scale down the side.

I worked-out (from the absence of bubbles in the blow-off bottle) that neither lid was airtight - the cable glands I used for the 8mm copper tube don't seem to seal well enough, and putting self-amalgam tape round the figure-of-8 wire for the TC-10 sensor didn't seal down the groove of the fig-8. I tested this using a bike pump and detergenty water solution: bubbles everywhere. On to the Mark 3, built on the Mark 1 lid while I was brewing a Märzen clone on Monday. Two 8mm compression-to-1/2" BSP fittings, screwed into the holes where the cable glands had been, with some food-grade silicone sealant. The cable gland for the sensor wire ditto, and the wire itself had the self-amalgam tape removed and heatshrink sleeving added, with sealant between the wire and the first layer, between the first and the second, and so on. If I'd had any adhesive heatshrink tubing that would have been less work. I'm wondering about a new thermistor probe in a stainless rod from Watch-Hill, like the Pt100 ones I use with the HERMS, and they come with round cable which is much easier to deal with.



The re-done lid is airtight, the cooling coil doesn't wave about like it did when it had the cable glands, and the Märzen clone has been glupping away happily at 15C on the Maxi 110 since I aerated it on Tuesday. The Alt is at 18C on the Maxi 310, and I'll swap chillers when I bottle the Alt and crash-cool the Märzen.

Since the Maxi chillers are higher than the fermenters, if I have to disconnect the cooling line so I can open the lid of the FV I get cold water down my arm, so I've added a couple of syphon taps to shut-off the flow if I need to (obviously I disconnect the pump as well). These will be replaced with JG 3/8" valves once Paul at The Harmony Hut get back from his hols.

[Scooby]

Excellent work e1n you've been busy

I got the ATC-800 probe as it has a round cable, it reads 1c out on the TC-10 can't remember which way now but the TC-10 has calibration on it so no prob.

[Scooby]

Just checked and I have the calibration set to -1c Forttek have the probe for £2.99

I know you have your heating sorted but I can recommend the heat mats he sells I have a 20w version it's very thin and easily attached to the circumference of a vessel.

I've been reading through the thread and noticed Rab mentioning running the python through a product line for extra cooling, good idea until I thought about it, will running water from the bath used to chill the product through that same water actually chill more?

[edit1now]

I'm not sure about running the chilling water through the product coil as well or not. If I can't get the beer cold enough when I get to the lagering stage I might try that - I think the product coil should be more-or-less in the ice bank so it may offer further cooling capacity.

Heating pads - good price! Would they wrap round the plastic FV or just sit underneath? I have one old Boots aquarium-style heater, which I could use for a third setup...

While I had the top off the Alt yesterday, to check the gravity and give it a bit of a rousing (Edit: 1016-ish after 9 days at 18C), I did the Mark 3 lid mod to that one as well, so I should have two airtight systems now. I'm wondering about a trip to Wilco's for more budget FVs. The two I'm using at the mo are the plain, no-tap style, and I still have my original two with taps, which tended to drip from time to time while fermenting. Given that I always syphon when racking or bottling, I think the taps are a bit redundant.... I could spend a happy afternoon burning my fingers with the hot glue gun while making-up further insulating jackets.

Also I found that one of my plastic bubblers will post into a 3/8" - 3/8" JG coupler, once I'd scraped the sprue off with a Stanley knife, so I've put that on the Märzen instead of the blow-off tube now it's unlikely to get over-excited and climb out. I haven't got room on the shelving to do that to the Alt unless I chop the top off the bubble lock

[Digby Swift]

I am thinking of using one of those nordic optical thermoboxes as a fermenter with my chiller hooked up to it. This would be a 60L fermenter. What are you thoughts on a heater? I currently use on the aquarium heaters in a 5 gallon fermenter, although its not really needed at this time of year. A heating mat would not be much good as the box is insulated and I am wondering whether the aquarium heater will be enough in a batch that size.

Do you guys suffer from the chiller turning on which drops the temperature enough for the heater to come on? I have been getting this but I have since just turned the heater off in this weather.