DIY Glycol/Water Chiller for Jacketed or Coil Wrapped Fermenters

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!

Freaking sweet! What did the tank use to be?

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Kyled93 said:

Freaking sweet! What did the tank use to be?

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I think it was built in the 80's, mostly out of 1/4,3/8 and 1/2" stainless and weighing in at about 300 lbs. my best guess is that it was a turnkey extract brewery as it has a heat skirt (notice how it is heat discolored in the bottom pic) and came with a burner. It holds pressure and had 3, 1/2" couplings welded on top. I added the 1 1/2" sanitary fitting and the tee for blowoff and thermowell to match my morebeer conical's functionality as well as a 2" butterfly valve on the output of the cone for dropping trub.

initial testing has proven successfull controlling cooling with aquarium chiller. Pumping the 50 degree cooled water through the jacket with a sump pump seems to work well and the 750 watt drum heater kicks major behind! Next up is to get the dual stage ranco wired up and hopefully I'll be fermenting 25 gallons of Belgian tripel in here this weekend! Any idea on how to make my photos line up correctly? this is driving me nuts.... any tips?

I like the idea of using an aquarium chiller. Never thought of that and wasn't sure how cold they got!

How long did it take to get to temperature?

For my DIY jacketed fermentor I used a water fountain and diaphragm Pump. It works pretty well for 15 gallon batches...

Great build and idea though!

Dude, I like the Brewhemoth (and the water fountain!) Are you happy with it? I have a few friends that are looking in that range and have some questions about the cone not being 60 degrees and still being effective at minimizing the dead yeast contact with the beer.... The 1/10th hp aquarium chillers are intended to work with 30-80 gallons. For 80 gallons they offer a -10 degree differential from ambient and at 30 gallons they offer a -30 degree diff. In my case I am using a 10 gallon reservoir so I tested it by putting 70 degree ground water from the hose into the reservoir and recirculating it with the aquarium pump (let me know if anyone is interested and I'll post pump models and amazon links) through the chiller. If the chiller is on the ground next to the reservoir (0 head) the chiller is much more efficient for some reason. With the chiller on top of the reservoir it takes an hour or two to drop the temp of 10 gallons of water 25 degrees. I keep it set at 48 degrees in my 85-90 degree summertime garage and it doesn't seem to tax it or run all the time. I then use a sump pump tied to a ranco to kick in and pump the water through the jacket to cool down the fermenter. I have only tested with PBW but it seems to move the needle a few degrees within a few minutes from ambient even with 30 gallons in the fermenter. Since I do mostly ales I like to start the first 24 hours of active fermentation around 65 and (if a Belgian) I will let it climb up to 70/71 over a couple of days to finish off. Things like Pliny I hold at 67-68 for the duration and being able to chill in the summertime is key! I get my shiny new 27 gallon heated/cooled Morebeer conical in about a week so I am looking forward to comparing the temp control on both to see how tight this system is when compared to the pelteirs on the more beer rig.

Thanks!

Yea, I really like the set up so far. The only downside if any is the chilled water line is 1/4", which is good and bad really. The bad is I have to use a diaphragm pump due to the amount of piping used and the good being the fountain barely runs to maintain temp. I originally contacted the fountains manufacture and they guaranteed that at 8gph with 90 ambient outside temp they could provide constant 50 degree water. Granted I think I have only about 40 oz of water in the loop which also allows the loop to cool quickly. The complete setup is a 50 foot 1/4" copper line wrapped around the outside then covered by Armaflex HVAC insulation. I have tested it with water so far and am able to maintain 50 degrees. I guess We will see what happens during active fermentation. I added some more photos.



As far as the brewhemouth, I would recommend this to anyone! It is a great product for an excellent price . It is pretty hard to find a SS conical fermentors that is 22 gallons for 500 or so dollars. I don't think the conical not being at 60 degrees is an issue. Some people say it is but in my opinion, by the time active fermentation is close to over you are usually removing the remaining trub and dead yeast from the bottom port so that you can pull beer through the racking port. Just my thought.

Great pics and build. Thanks for the recommendation on the Brewhemoth - I contacted them to see if they would/could build a bigger one and they never responded. I like the made in USA fact as well as what I have heard from people that use them. My stable now includes a heated/cooled 14 Gallon Morebeer v2 Conical, the beast above (1BBL 300lbs of SS) and I have a 27 Gallon Morebeer heated/cooled unit coming in the next few weeks. Now I just need to get out to the garage and find time to brew!

Lots of testing with water and starsan, temp holds great and chiller as well as the band heater work well! First real test, 25 gallons of high gravity Belgian Tripel this weekend, starts off at 65 degrees and ends up at about 71 several weeks later. September is typically one of the hottest months around here in Cali so this thing is going to get quite a workout!

So the 1/10th hp chiller works well at maintaining the temp but with a 10 gallon reservoir it seems to struggle if I'm looking to cool the wort more than a couple of degrees at a time. 25 gallons of wort made it into the fermenter at 73 degrees and I wanted to get it down to 65 to pitch the yeast. The chiller couldn't keep up and after dropping it to 71 pretty much equalized the cooling water temp to that in the fermenter... I added ice to the reservoir and was able to hit my target. Now that it's at 65 it seems to be holding well over the past 12 hours. I'm guessing that a 1/4 or 1/2 horsepower chiller would be able to keep up or a larger reservoir. Live and learn!

Temp control!

update: This thing holds at 70 fine day and night for 10 relatively hot days out in the garage. Does not appear to be taxing the chiller at all. So short of getting down to initial pitching temp which I would accomplish with Ice added to the coolant reservoir in the first place next time this thing is rocking!

What's the coolest you where able to get your reservoir? I have a similar unit, but have not tested it out yet. Wondering if it is even worth it if it can't get below 40ºF.

Bsquared said:

What's the coolest you where able to get your reservoir? I have a similar unit, but have not tested it out yet. Wondering if it is even worth it if it can't get below 40ºF.

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I predominantly do ales so I was fine with the temp drop on a 10 gallon reservoir in the 40s. What did not work great for me in this regards was the thickness of the stainless conical and the amount of thermal impact that the cold water had (I didn't use coolant last time) it would frequently cost 7-10 degree rise in the jacket water to net impact a 1 degree drop inside the conical. This made it fairly inefficient for this particular rig for anything other than temp maintenance. To be fair most of my test batches were done in the hottest time of year with the garage temperature ranging from the high 80's to the high 90's in any given day. I do believe that a larger chiller (1/3hp) would have done a better job but at the cost of those a used beer line chiller is a better option and does not require an external reservoir. I also experimented with a lab water bath unit but it was junk so I could not get it to maintain temp, those systems typically have cooling and heating integrated and the theory was more around ideal temp consistency and letting the bath unit apply heating or cooling as required to maintain the temp. All in all I am happier with the space saving by leveraging Peltier coolers on my other conicals to maintain temps +/-1 degree regardless of the time of year and can cold crash down into the 40's prior to kegging.

Okay thanks. Ill give my idea a shot. I'm going to use an Immersion coil in side the conical, and this will be done in a temperature controlled room at 68º. Im hoping I can get a 70qt reservoir down as low as I can go, Ideally it will be 27ºF Glycol/water mix. If I can't get that with this unit, ill use a small freezer chest. I have all the parts I scavenged, so I might as well give it a shot.

Bsquared said:

Okay thanks. Ill give my idea a shot. I'm going to use an Immersion coil in side the conical, and this will be done in a temperature controlled room at 68º. Im hoping I can get a 70qt reservoir down as low as I can go, Ideally it will be 27ºF Glycol/water mix. If I can't get that with this unit, ill use a small freezer chest. I have all the parts I scavenged, so I might as well give it a shot.

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How'd it work out?

I have not gotten to it yet. I'm hoping to get to it soon, but I've been getting killed at work.

Bsquared said:

I have not gotten to it yet. I'm hoping to get to it soon, but I've been getting killed at work.

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I hear ya, the garage looks like a warzone right now due to lack of cycles. Let me know how it works out. I just ordered a couple of 240l unitank fermenters from glacier and will either build a small cold room with a coolbot to control them or build glycol snakes internally and pump from a reservoir.

Nice armaflex job. One sheet?

StMarcos said:

Nice armaflex job. One sheet?

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Not quite. It took about one sheet for the vertical section, then another for the domed top and an additional piece for the conical. Works very well though! I'm cold crashing a blonde now and am sitting at 53 here in Florida.

Kyled93 said:

Not quite. It took about one sheet for the vertical section, then another for the domed top and an additional piece for the conical. Works very well though! I'm cold crashing a blonde now and am sitting at 53 here in Florida.

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It's cold out here in Cali (40's at night, high 60's in the daytime so that's relative) but when cold crashing my B3 27g with the two big Peltier TECs last week it took my Pliny clone from 68 to 37 in 12 hours.... I was shocked.

So Im doing a test tonight, My chiller will let me set it to 36º, I have my old 40Qt mash tun filled with water and a 200GPH pond pump recalculating through the chiller. I set it to 40, Im going to see if it gets down to 40, then Ill push it to 36 and see if it craps out. This is the Immersion chiller I hope to use it with.

Thing worked great, held 36* all day. Next ill test it with the fermenter.

marcb said:

two big Peltier TECs l

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How big are your TECs? What wattage? And how are you cooling them?

prandlesc said:

How big are your TECs? What wattage? And how are you cooling them?

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sorry, been out of country this week. I'm not sure the size as they are the ones that came with my more beer 27 gallon H/C conical and I don't want to take them apart. I will figure out the Amp rating on the PS to deduce the wattage and we should be able to size them reasonably from that. What is unique is the contact surface area for the fermenter and also the heatsink/fan. I will take photos and post. The day I got down in the 30's so quickly it was relatively cold out in the garage overnight but I have never seen a drop like this before (so fast) for cold crashing. There was frost on the pad connecting it to the fermenter in the morning.

marcb said:

sorry, been out of country this week. I'm not sure the size as they are the ones that came with my more beer 27 gallon H/C conical and I don't want to take them apart. I will figure out the Amp rating on the PS to deduce the wattage and we should be able to size them reasonably from that. What is unique is the contact surface area for the fermenter and also the heatsink/fan. I will take photos and post. The day I got down in the 30's so quickly it was relatively cold out in the garage overnight but I have never seen a drop like this before (so fast) for cold crashing. There was frost on the pad connecting it to the fermenter in the morning.

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About 6" square and the ps is rated for 12.5 amps which means it is max a 150w Peltier. It is drawing considerably less than that though as the ranco relay and circuit that it is plugged into (2 of them) is max 20a. My best guess is that it is probably a 100w Peltier. Larger surface area and fan certainly help its efficiency though.

marcb said:

About 6" square and the ps is rated for 12.5 amps which means it is max a 150w Peltier. It is drawing considerably less than that though as the ranco relay and circuit that it is plugged into (2 of them) is max 20a. My best guess is that it is probably a 100w Peltier. Larger surface area and fan certainly help its efficiency though.

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Thanks for the info.