I am planning on building a fermentation chamber this weekend kind of based on the "son of fermentation" chamber. The one thing I am not wanting to do is swap out water bottles. I was thinking of buying a small freezer, something like this. I was then thinking put a bucket of glycol in the freezer, then running a line in the chamber to a small radiator, something like on a computer water cooling system. Then put a fan on the radiator to cool the chamber, oh and also a pump to recirculate the glycol. But I am starting to wonder if this setup will cool the chamber enough. Does anyone have any experience with a setup similar to this?
__________________ Black Warrior Brewery
Primary's: Hob Goblin II, JOAM, Bleached Blonde Ale, Blonde Helles
Kegged: Imperial Honey Porter, JZ American Brown Ale, Scottish 80/-, Lake Walk Pale Ale, EdWort's Apfelwein, Parti-gyle Porter, Blueberry Blonde
Coming Up: Westvleteren 12 clone, Oktoberfast, SWMBO Slayer
Projects: Fermentation Chamber Beer Blog
Wow... I think you are trying to make this as complicated as humanly possible.
If you are going through all that trouble, why would you not just use the fridge as the cooling source? Just patch that sucker directly into the fermentation chamber cooling space. Then you could override the thermostat and have exact temp control, better efficiency and less hacking apart and rigging of a quasi-glycol system. Just my .02
I am building the chamber to look like a piece of furniture. It will have about 4 separate chambers for the carboys. I might designate one chamber for the freezer or just having it sitting next to it. I have seen something similar that someone built on here but I think he used ice and fans to send cold air to the chambers. I am just wanting to not have to keep swapping out ice every few days.
__________________ Black Warrior Brewery
Primary's: Hob Goblin II, JOAM, Bleached Blonde Ale, Blonde Helles
Kegged: Imperial Honey Porter, JZ American Brown Ale, Scottish 80/-, Lake Walk Pale Ale, EdWort's Apfelwein, Parti-gyle Porter, Blueberry Blonde
Coming Up: Westvleteren 12 clone, Oktoberfast, SWMBO Slayer
Projects: Fermentation Chamber Beer Blog
You could consider using a side by side fridge and doing a project similar to what I have in my sig. I will be finishing mine with paint, but you could easily finish it is wood paneling. If it is going in your house and needs to look like a non brewing piece then you are going to have to conceal the fridge inside the piece.
Fermentation Chamber
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