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I've been tinkering with the idea of getting both a kegerator for serving, and a keezer for fermentation temperature control.
The problem is that my garage space is limited, and that the temperature in my garage is darn hot in the summer.
So my brain got in second gear and I came up with this idea:
Have a kegerator that holds 4-5 cornies, and use one of the cornies as a cold-water refrigeration system.
Essentially, the last keg holds water, which gets transferred by a pump with a Johnson control, to a fermentation vessel.
I'd probably use 2 containers (call em buckets) larger than the 6-gallon fermenters I use, and fill them with water. Each bucket has an outflow which is T'ed (to keep the level the same in both buckets), and that T is used as the input to the pump. The pump flows from the T, to the keg inside the fridge (or it could be a copper coil, but a keg is cheaper).
The buckets would then be in an enclosed styrofoam box to prevent cooling loss.
There probably would have to be a one-way somewhere to prevent drainage, unless of course the buckets' water level is the same as the level of water inside the keg.
Am I just nuts?
M_C
The problem is that my garage space is limited, and that the temperature in my garage is darn hot in the summer.
So my brain got in second gear and I came up with this idea:
Have a kegerator that holds 4-5 cornies, and use one of the cornies as a cold-water refrigeration system.
Essentially, the last keg holds water, which gets transferred by a pump with a Johnson control, to a fermentation vessel.
I'd probably use 2 containers (call em buckets) larger than the 6-gallon fermenters I use, and fill them with water. Each bucket has an outflow which is T'ed (to keep the level the same in both buckets), and that T is used as the input to the pump. The pump flows from the T, to the keg inside the fridge (or it could be a copper coil, but a keg is cheaper).
The buckets would then be in an enclosed styrofoam box to prevent cooling loss.
There probably would have to be a one-way somewhere to prevent drainage, unless of course the buckets' water level is the same as the level of water inside the keg.
Am I just nuts?
M_C