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thomasdt12 · 10-20-2009, 11:23 PM

Morebeer sells a pretty expensive Conical that promises to cool 25-33 F lower than room temp. It has a heater as well, but the 7.1 Gallon deal is 14 bags of ziti ($1400!).

http://morebeer.com/view_product/16166/102278/Complete_Conical_Fermenter_-_With_Cooling7.1_Gallons

I am wondering if anyone has taken another Stainless Steel Conical (like this one :
http://cgi.ebay.com/CONICAL-FERMENTER-7-GALLON-STAINLESS-HOMEBREW_W0QQitemZ290361609652QQcmdZViewItemQQptZL H_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item439ae68db4), and added Peltier cooling and foam?

This ebay one looks surprising similar to the morebeer one, and bare-bones is $320 delivered. My thought is to get this conical, find appropriate foam, peltier coolers, temperature control then figure out how to mount them all.

So far, I am estimating at the most a clone of this morebeer conical could be built for well under $600.

**Pappers_** · 10-21-2009, 03:08 AM

very interesting, have never seen a conical with temp control like this, thanks for pointing it out!

thomasdt12 · 10-21-2009, 04:48 AM

no problem, if you get one give me the skinny on how things are attached :>

I think I have been fermenting to high a temp., so need convince the old lady I "need" this !

**beerthirty** · 10-21-2009, 04:56 AM

Yuri built a peltier cornie and did some testing with it. The results were not encouraging, and Yuri's stuff is the bomb. IIRC it was that conical he was trying to copy results from.

**Yuri_Rage** · 10-21-2009, 05:06 AM

It didn't work well for me. Peltier devices are terribly inefficient for cooling, and effective heat dissipation is extremely important. I had a HUGE heat sink and fan assembly on a rather large Peltier, and it barely affected the temperature of roughly 5 gallons of water at room temperature.

Here's my thread from a while back:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-thermoelectric-temperature-control-27524/

I'd love to get my hands on one of those MoreBeer chillers to reverse engineer it. There are some Peltier-based aquarium products that seem promising, also.

thomasdt12 · 10-21-2009, 08:31 AM

Good info., thanks Yuri and beerthirty. The little bit of info. I have found on the morebeer unit shows it does appear to work. Here in NCAL, if I could get a unit that could always cool 20 degrees below ambient it would help greatly.

SpanishCastleAle · 10-21-2009, 03:01 PM

IIRC, those things put off quite a bit of heat. So if you put it in a smallish room with no (or even very little) air exchange that room would get fairly warm, which then just reduces the efficiency of the unit and 25 degrees less than 'warm' is still not that cold. But I don't know anything about the Morebeer unit. Intuitively seems feasible for ale temps in warmish climates but lager temps in warm climates seems optimistic.

I was considering buying a peltier-based cooler and just hacking it up to get a pre-engineered peltier unit with fan/heat sinks/etc. for a ferm chamber but after reading Yuri's thread and a few other things decided that ice packs in a water bath works and is simple enough.

nostalgia · 10-21-2009, 03:27 PM

What about a heat exchanger *inside* the fermenter?

What I'm thinking is a stainless steel coil (think jockey box) in the fermenter with attachments either through the lid or side of the conical. You'd hook it up to house water. There could be an electric solenoid valve (the one I just bought cost $60) that's driven by our standard Love temp controllers (also about $60).

It could easily be adapted to a glycol system to eliminate water waste.

I guess the only downside would be cleaning, but if it's attached to the lid it could be completely removed from the fermenter for cleaning/sanitizing.

-Joe