Immersion Coil & Fermenter

I just happen to have a spare 14.5-gallon conical fermenter laying around and a spare stainless-steel immersion chiller.

You fellas have any ideas on how I could put these two together to control the temperature of my ferments from the inside of the conical...

The first place I think I would start would be... use a Ranco two-stage controller, a pump to cycle fluid... blah, blah, blah.... (I see folks talking about glycol). How would I go about physically lowering and raising the temperature of the glycol?

Ideas...

What I've seen done is putting the glycol in a container in a freezer. A submersible pond pump goes in the container. Pump is cycles on and off as needed to control temps. Use RV antifreeze if you do this. At least it is non toxic.

jfrizzell said:

What I've seen done is putting the glycol in a container in a freezer. A submersible pond pump goes in the container. Pump is cycles on and off as needed to control temps. Use RV antifreeze if you do this. At least it is non toxic.

Click to expand...

Yeah... I got that much down.

What I am racking my brain over is the how to heat and chill the coolant.

(This is mostly just a exericise in theory)

must be pretty awesom to just have a conical fermenter laying around.... another idea is to use a cooler full of ice water in place of the glycol and freezer, it takes a bit more oberservation but it generally cheaper, unless you already have a freezer available.

for heat you could do the same but place an aquarium heater in the cooler

I don't think it'd be efficient, but putting a coil in front of a heat pump, and wiring the heat pump to either heat or cool depending on which way you want to go might work. Be a little work on the heat pump controller, and you'd need a coil there and in the fermenter as well. If you're going to have two coils, might as well put two in the fermenter, with one going to a chiller and one going to an aquarium heated bath.

there is also this unit....

https://morewinepro.com/view_product/6752/102939/Kreyer_Chilly_Max_50_Glycol_Chiller_Heater

kind depends on how far you want to go with this

you dont generally need both heating and cooling at the same time; if the ambient temp is above what you want, then you need to chill the coolant. if the ambient temp is blow what you want to ferment at, its easier to turn up the thermostat in the room instead of trying to also heat the coolant.

If you decide ya need a heating option. You could use the "heat tape" like they use on plumbing in mobile home trailers (to keep water lines from freezing in winter). Sometimes called "pipe heating cable".

An electrical cable that produces heat when it is plugged in. It is simple, cheap to run, and cheap initial investment.

Also works well for small fermenting chambers that need warmer temps.

*edit* obviously I wouldn't put it inside the conical

JoshuaWhite5522 said:

for heat you could do the same but place an aquarium heater in the cooler

Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking today, acquariam heater.

Elementary thinking exercise really... To shoot the breeze... I have always fermented using the ambient temperature of a closet. A long, long time ago I had a fermentation cabinet: Honeywell Thermostat rigged to a heat source. It worked well.