Glycol fermenter 1st run
 

I built this after I saw Marty's article in Brew Your Own. I built my own evaporator coil to cover more area inside the cooler. I am testing it out on a oatmeal stout, The temps in my garage are in the upper 70's to mid 80's right now, and it is having no trouble holding 66 degrees, it only runs for 10-15 min. twice a day.

Man that is dandy! What issue was that in?

Looks really good. Running 15 minutes a day for you would only be a few minutes a day for me.

It is in the May-June 2009 issue

Very Cool! I'm in the process of building something similar. I just got a window ac unit and I will be also be trying to chill a sanke keg. I was also hoping to be able to lager in the keg as well.

I don't have access to that article and I have a few questions:

1) Do you have two temp controls - one for the glycol bath and another for the fermenter?

2) Can you provide any more details on how you built your evaporator coil? I was going to try to just put the factory evap in the glycol bath and hope for the best, but that seems like a better option.

3) Where did you get your glycol? Does it have any rust inhibitors in it?

Sorry for all the questions. This is really interesting.

Thanks in advance.

I am just using one ranco temp control to turn system on when beer temp rises.
The evaporator is about 25 feet of 3/8 copper, you will need to be able to remove the refrigerant from the system to weld in the new coil. In the article in the magazine he used the factory coil. I used 50 feet of 3/8 copper around the sanke keg as tight as I could get it. I am using a 250 gph pond pump to circulate the glycol around the keg. I used regular RV antifreeze (potable) for the glycol. I hope this helps you can PM me if you have any other questions

thanks, I'm going to try to get ahold of that issue. I have an extra ac unit laying around should make for a good project. :mug:

Awesome. Thank you for the info. I don't think I'll be able to remove the refrigerant so I think I'll just stick with the factory evap. I was also thinking about using multiple temp controllers so maybe in the (distant) future, I could have multiple fermenters cooling off one glycol bath.

Let us know how the beer turns out. :mug:

P-Lay,

I plan on doing the same thing with the multiple fermenters. I was thinking that this project would be the perfect use of an Arduino. See sean coates project on uHobby. Good luck and let us know when you do it.

Highland, hope it works out well. How did you remove the refrigerant?

I had to install a service port on my window ac to recover the refrigerant, weld in ports are best, piercing type will work, but tend to leak over time.