Cooling a Fermentor

[IanRMartin]

Right here is my experiment as discussed in the Tap Room thread "Hard earned Money Spent!"

Set up as picture


One large cold water tank
One 25Ltr Fermenter with Lid
Digital Thermometer
Loads of water

To get the Fermenter Real value i just added 2 degrees as a rough guess.
I will edit this post with new data as i record it.

Initial results:

Tap water temp 15.6

Date / Time_________Ambient____Tank___Fermenter___Fermenter Real
06-07-06 11:00pm___23.1_______17.4___17.9________19.9
07-07-06 7:20am____20.3_______18.0___18.4________20.4
07-07-06 6:00pm____21.0_______18.9___18.9________20.9
07-07-06 10:00pm___21.7_______19.5___19.3________21.5
08-07-06 7:20am____18.6_______18.8___18.5________20.8
08-07-06 9:10am____19.6_______18.8___18.5________20.8
08-07-06 1:10pm____19.8_______18.9___18.6________20.6
08-07-06 7:00pm____20.5_______19.1___18.8________21.1

I have had to stop this experiment early as the weather is cooling down I have decided to do my first home brew!! (see the brew day write up in the kit section......when i get around to it)

Early conclusions and thoughts on this experiment:
Even with just these few results i would have second thoughts about using this type of setup to cool a fermenter down! I would appear to me that you don't achieve much in the way of cooling just the temperature is delayed in other words The ambient temp takes a while to warm the tank and the time it takes would depend on amount of water which then in trun warms the fermenter and so you just get a delayed temperature change.
It would help with any short term peaks if it suddenly got Very hot for a few hours over lunch time the fermenter would become warmer later in the day but not to hot and the same over night if the temp dropped very low, but if the ambient temp was constant for more than a few hours then with this setup you would get very close to a state of equilibrium.
This would be more useful for cooling down a fermenter ready to pitch your yeast starter in.

If the weather really gets hot again i'll restart the experiment with some of the ideas mentioned in this thread.

[mysterio]

Great, I'll be interested to hear the results!

[jasonaustin]

Me too.
Can't help thinking that you will need some kind of external cooling help (eg, fan) and/or source (eg, ice) though. You have a massive heat source in the surrounding atmosphere and a small heat source in the fermenting beer. Both are trying their hardest to heat the water in the tank! And relatively speaking the volume of water in the tank is small, so I think they will win.
On the other hand it's going to be difficult to cool the water in the tank, because relative to the volume of ice that it may be possible to provide (say a few frozen 4pt milk containers?) the volume is large and the ice source may not have too great an effect on the overall water temperature.
A water change every 12/24 hours may be the most effective way of cooling the water (although the do-gooder environmentalist in me says "save the warm water for watering the garden please"!!) And possibly you could fill via an immersion chiller in a bucket of ice to really get the temperature down.
Look forward to the results though - theory and practice are often very different in my experience.
J

[IanRMartin]

QUOTE (jasonaustin @ Jul 7 2006, 10:54 AM)Me too.
Can't help thinking that you will need some kind of external cooling help (eg, fan) and/or source (eg, ice) though.  You have a massive heat source in the surrounding atmosphere and a small heat source in the fermenting beer.  Both are trying their hardest to heat the water in the tank!  And relatively speaking the volume of water in the tank is small, so I think they will win.
On the other hand it's going to be difficult to cool the water in the tank, because relative to the volume of ice that it may be possible to provide (say a few frozen 4pt milk containers?) the volume is large and the ice source may not have too great an effect on the overall water temperature.
A water change every 12/24 hours may be the most effective way of cooling the water (although the do-gooder environmentalist in me says "save the warm water for watering the garden please"!!)  And possibly you could fill via an immersion chiller in a bucket of ice to really get the temperature down.
Look forward to the results though - theory and practice are often very different in my experience.
J
You have very accurately predicted where I was going with this experiment!

This is the first easiest state, just fill everything up and leave it. I will probably record temps like this for 4 -5 days

Next I will set up a fan and have it blowing across the top of the water in the tank and again monitor the temps for a few more days

Then ice packs I plan to drop 4 1/2 ltr ice packs in each morning and remove them at night (To refreeze) Although after your comments I may increase this with a few 1/2 ltr pop bottles.

And finally I was planning to cut a small hole in the side fit a bit of tubing (Garden hose or large siphon tubing) and run water in continuously and during the day an turn it off at night and could vary the rate from say 1/2Ltr a minute up to 2Ltrs a minute (Don't tell the environmentalists!!! I will only be trying this for a couple of days! And I don't water my garden)

Ian

[BlightyBrewer]

QUOTE (IanRMartin @ Jul 7 2006, 11:14 AM) And finally I was planning to cut a small hole in the side fit a bit of tubing (Garden hose or large siphon tubing) and run water in continuously and during the day an turn it off at night and could vary the rate from say 1/2Ltr a minute up to 2Ltrs a minute (Don't tell the environmentalists!!! I will only be trying this for a couple of days! And I don't water my garden)

Ian
2 ltrs a minute all day for 5 days!!! That's approximately 6000 ltrs of water...I'm guessing you are not on a meter!

[IanRMartin]

Experiment stopped first post in this thread has been up-dated.

BB 2Ltrs a minute was my upper limit on flow rate and i wasn't going to run it 24hrs i think you would only need about 10hrs a day say 9:00am till 7:00pm over night it should be cool enough.

But you are of course right i am not on a meter !

[fizzypop boy]

Is it not possible to put frozen bottles of water directly into the wort to lower the temp,which would then make it a very easy process.

[mysterio]

I'm cold conditioning my cream ale at the moment. I'm keeping the glass carboy in a 10 gallong bottling bucket full of water and periodically adding ice (got a few ice cream tubs in the freezer). I pulverise the ice before it goes in the bottling bucket. Its probably not doing anything but its something extra to putz around with

Ian the continuous flow of water doesn't sound very economical, I'd stick with the ice!

[IanRMartin]

QUOTE (fizzypop boy @ Jul 10 2006, 11:38 AM)Is it not possible to put frozen bottles of water directly into the wort to lower the temp,which would then make it a very easy process.
Its possible..................... But a few problems spring to mind.
The bottles or freezer packs would have to be sterilised before putting in but after freezing! Which if you sterilise cold with thin bleach that’s a 20min wait while they are cooling your sterilising water down rather than the wort and if you sterilise hot then its not worth it.
Also once you have used them they would need cleaning re-freezing then sterilising again, it wouldn't be to bad if you were using large freezer blocks which wouldn't loose to much cold (Or is it gain to much heat) while they were sterilising.

Also the temperature shock I would imagine is not good for yeast! (I'm guessing anyone have any info on this??) The wort immediately around the bottle or pack would become very cold and you would need to stir constantly to avoid cold spots and this would in turn increase the risk of oxidation especially if it was done after the first few days.

But putting freezer blocks into the tank around the fermenter gets rid of all these problems no cleaning or sterilising no temperature shock and no need to stir the wort. On the down side the efficiency would be very low as you have to chill a large volume of water before it would chill your fementer. I will be trying this if we get some more hot weather.

Ian

[mysterio]

Ice packs work well:



I'm doing a similar experiment to yours to see if I can get cool enough temps to make lager.

[IanRMartin]

QUOTE (mysterio @ Jul 10 2006, 12:00 PM)
Ian the continuous flow of water doesn't sound very economical, I'd stick with the ice!
To be honest i probably won't try it. I was initally trying to think of all the possabilites, continuous flow was just one of them.
I Like the ice pack method and would probably give that ago if i needed to although using a cold water tank like i have i would need A LOT of ice to keep it cool or some other way to reduce the tank volume may be with house bricks.


I would be interested to here how cool you were able to keep that setup, as i might consider a larger at some point my self.

Ian

[IanRMartin]

QUOTE (Daft as a Brush @ Jul 10 2006, 12:51 PM)Another method if you know any publicans or get lucky on E-bay would be to use a flash chiller, a pump and an immersion chiller and recycle cool water (cooled by the flash chiller) through the copper immersion chiller (immersed in the beer).
I'm working on the aquisition of a flash chiller at the moment, it doesnt matter if they arent working too well as you wouldnt want the water to be ice cold anyway, so one thats almost ready for the scrap heap would be fine. I saw one on E-bay for £20 not so long ago.
I think if i was going to go that far, I would be better off getting a 2nd hand fridge and getting some help changing the thermostat!
Ummmmm...... Dedicated fermenting and chilling beer fridge.......Ummmmmm

[jasonaustin]

As mentioned in my brew day thread viewtopic.php?p=11039 , I have kept records of temperatures during the primary fermentation in my (Ken Schwartz) chiller. Not sure how useful/interesting this will be, but I kept the records so I may as well share the results.



As you can see the brewery/garage got very hot during the days, but the chiller performed well and kept the wort at a reasonably steady 19 degrees. The chiller temperature actually varies by about 2-3 degrees (due to how the thermostat works), so the chiller temps are the average of the min and max temps between each reading.

During the 3.5 days of taking readings I changed the ice (2 x 4pt milk containers) twice.

[BlightyBrewer]

That's very impressive. I like the idea of that chiller. Would be good for cornies too.

[Andy]

great result jason!