Conical Fermenter Chiller/Heater Build

Williams 728
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Sweet build! Just throwing this out there for you, but I insulated my hot side equipment (all Sanke keg holes) with Reflectix insulation sealed with duct tape then shot with insulating truck bed liner. Very efficient and sturdy, plus it looks good. Check out my HLT build in my threads. I would post a link but I'm on my phone. I will be following this thread and can't wait to see the final product.
 
WortMonger said:
Sweet build! Just throwing this out there for you, but I insulated my hot side equipment (all Sanke keg holes) with Reflectix insulation sealed with duct tape then shot with insulating truck bed liner. Very efficient and sturdy, plus it looks good. Check out my HLT build in my threads. I would post a link but I'm on my phone. I will be following this thread and can't wait to see the final product.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll check it out.
 
Stainless tube showed up today for my fermenter (along with some other toys). I'll be sealing a probe into the bottom of it later today or tomorrow.

RN0uW.jpg


-Jason
 
Any update on this? I have a plastic conical and I'm thinking of doing this using a stainless coil immersion chiller connected to a reservoir of water cooled by peltier.
 
Patirck said:
Any update on this? I have a plastic conical and I'm thinking of doing this using a stainless coil immersion chiller connected to a reservoir of water cooled by peltier.
Click to expand...

Totally thought I updated this a while ago, whoops! So I have been using this setup for many batches now and it has been working great! I have yet to clean up the wiring mess and such as I may move to a BrewPi.

The stainless coil I am using has no issues pulling up or down the temp of the 5 gallons in the fermenter even with the extremely limited flow (due to my pump).

Current setup:



I am currently working on a peltier based heating and cooling upgrade for my system too, some parts were gutted from an old water block I made for a graphics card years ago.

The possible new chiller unit.


Testing
 
just out of curiosity... How much do you think it would cost to run that?
 
Rivenin said:
just out of curiosity... How much do you think it would cost to run that?
Click to expand...

Not sure yet. It still gets quite cool @ 5vdc/3amps so I am hoping I can use it there. If I get some time in the next few weeks I'm going to get it hooked up to a small 1U computer powersupply and see what my Kill A Watt says.
 
First fermentation done. This setup works very well for the minor temp changes and holding a temp from 64 to I'm guessing 80 but crash cooling was an issue.

j9vUrNh.png


A new heating/chilling element is in order before my next brew. Everything else was perfect.

EoYWnXJ.png


-Jason
 
Hey Jason, how's this project progressing? I was wondering why does your room temp appear to be zig zagging up and down until you start crash cooling?

Also, did you have any troubles with condensation forming on the fermentor when you're crash chilling?
 
megabyte said:
Hey Jason, how's this project progressing? I was wondering why does your room temp appear to be zig zagging up and down until you start crash cooling?

Also, did you have any troubles with condensation forming on the fermentor when you're crash chilling?
Click to expand...

No big updates, the setup works ok for 5 gallon batches but now that the weather is getting warmer I either need to build an insulated enclosure for the fermenter or upgrade the cooling.

The zigzagging is from the exhaust from the hot side of the chiller warming up the room. If I build an enclosure this should go away.

Recently I brewed a 10 gallon batch and the chiller is no were close to handling the fermentation in a room temperature room. IT was on at least 75% of the time to keep things cool. After my upcoming vacation i'll be spending some time upgrading things.

-Jason
 
Thanks Jason, I'll stay tuned to see your progress.

I've got a similar setup running off about 110W input power and I was only getting a drop of about 10f below ambient for a non-fermenting liquid. Then I added some insulation around the fermenter and it nearly doubled. In my case I'm using a small Pentium III heat sink for the hot side and I think this is the limiting factor in my cooling ability.

The trouble with insulation is you hide all the sexy stainless :)
 
Luiscv said:
Where i can buy this coils??
Please help
Click to expand...
Ive seen very similiar ones on ebay.
I have a coil in my ssbrewtech conical and for my other 3 conicals I made jackets out of blue 1 1/2" discharge hose or used a jacket from coolzone.com and I actually prefer the jackets for a couple reasons. The biggest being cleaning is much easier without having to clean the coil. I do have 2 layers of reflective bubble wrap around my conicals though which covers the jackets.
unfortunatly jackets wont work with a blichmann conical due to the leg design.
 
augiedoggy said:
Ive seen very similiar ones on ebay.
I have a coil in my ssbrewtech conical and for my other 3 conicals I made jackets out of blue 1 1/2" discharge hose or used a jacket from coolzone.com and I actually prefer the jackets for a couple reasons. The biggest being cleaning is much easier without having to clean the coil. I do have 2 layers of reflective bubble wrap around my conicals though which covers the jackets.
unfortunatly jackets wont work with a blichmann conical due to the leg design.
Click to expand...

I'm looking to get a couple of those coolzone jackets. I want to ferment in kegs. Do you think these would work for that?
 
leesmith said:
I'm looking to get a couple of those coolzone jackets. I want to ferment in kegs. Do you think these would work for that?
Click to expand...
Yes they sell different size ones... you would want the small 1 gallon sized ones if your looking to use regular corny kegs I would think.. I use one of the larger carboy sized ones for my 12.5gallon stout conical.. fits perfect but its only 12" wide.
The discharge hose works better but its not as clean of an installation.
 
I know this is an old thread but now there is software like brucontrol that works great with an arduino for keeping fermenter temps.. I even use simple scripts for temp profiles for different yeasts to automatically ramp up and cold crash... The next version will work with the tilt hydrometers so they can do all this automatically when the gravity reaches the proper levels.
 
augiedoggy said:
Yes they sell different size ones... you would want the small 1 gallon sized ones if your looking to use regular corny kegs I would think.. I use one of the larger carboy sized ones for my 12.5gallon stout conical.. fits perfect but its only 12" wide.
The discharge hose works better but its not as clean of an installation.
Click to expand...

Would you mind sharing pics of the discharge hose one you made?

And where did you get the hose from?
 
leesmith said:
Would you mind sharing pics of the discharge hose one you made?

And where did you get the hose from?
Click to expand...
Hose can be bought at home depot or online.. I bought mine on Ebay. There are pics in the middle of my build thread in my signature. Theres also a YouTube video someone shared of a stout conical being controlled with it. That's were I got the idea.
 

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