marcb
Well-Known Member
I recently lucked into a jacketed 1BBL fermenter on CL. It is built like a tank and needed some work (and vigorous cleaning). I added a blowoff and thermowell and decided to make it heated/cooled to maintain stable fermentation temp while living out in my sunny california garage. Initially some lunkhead used galvanized fittings on the jacket which required a new extremely large wrench to get it loosened but after a good clean up and removal of all the galvanized rust and crud it was good to go. I sourced a 1/10 hp aquarium chiller for about $100 on CL and bought an aquarium pump on amazon for about $20 to circulate the water through the chiller from a 10 Gallon Rubbermaid round cooler ($40 home depot). I also incorporated a 1/5HP sump pump (~$40 on amazon) and a drum silicon belt heater from ebay (~$100). I plan on wiring a Ranco dual stage controller to control the sump and the heating belt with the probe into a 24" sanitary thermowell from Brewershardware.com. Long story short for about $600 I have a +/- 1 degree fermentation rig for 30+ gallons of beer!