Has anyone tried tapwater chillers?

[aangel]

Just wondering. Has anyone tried basically a glycol circuit but using simple tapwater flow through the system? I'm thinking copper tubing wrapped around fermentation kegs, a temperature sensor taped to each keg wall, and a valve that controls the flow of water in or out.

Anyone done something like that? Seems like you could use it to simplify fermentation temp control somewhat while still getting finetuned control

 

[day_trippr]

I expect the weak point in such a scheme is the high thermal resistance between the "wrapped" coil and the fermentation vessel as even if one managed to get the entire length of the coil in contact with the vessel wall the "ribbon" of contact is literally microscopic in width.

The thermal efficiency could be improved by wrapping the coil with an efficient insulation layer but the thermal resistance is still going to be much higher than, say, a coil submerged inside the vessel...

Cheers!

 

[aangel]

True, true, but that's a difficult thing to achieve for me since I'm fermenting in corny kegs. If I ever see a stainless steel chiller coil that's built into a corny keg lid I'd be game.

 

[madscientist451]

I have and old farm where they used to milk cows and they stored the milk in a concrete "milkhouse" near the barn. Cool water was piped down the hill from a natural spring and run through pipes in a concrete trough which also had cool spring water in it.
Metal cans with fresh warm milk were placed in the chilling trough to cool down.
No electricity or pumps, but I've been told it worked pretty good.
So perhaps a tub with water and cooling coils that you could place the fermenter into would be better than wrapping coils around the fermenter?

 

[kh54s10]

Wouldn't work where I live. Water lines are buried about 1 foot down. So my tap water hit 80 degrees in February.

Interesting idea though. I think I would look to recirculating water though. Cooling with city water could get really expensive. I would assume many gallons a day for 10 - 48 days depending on how long you ferment.

 

[helterscelter]

I expect the weak point in such a scheme is the high thermal resistance between the "wrapped" coil and the fermentation vessel as even if one managed to get the entire length of the coil in contact with the vessel wall the "ribbon" of contact is literally microscopic in width.

The thermal efficiency could be improved by wrapping the coil with an efficient insulation layer but the thermal resistance is still going to be much higher than, say, a coil submerged inside the vessel...

Cheers!

When I did my first sanke fermenter, I silver soldered a copper coil around the keg and then used thermally conductive silicone adhesive to fill in the gaps and edges around the coil.. this plus a layer of insulation ( I just use a keg jacket like you would for keeping a keg cold at a party) works pretty well. This could also be done to a corny keg..

http://siliconesolutions.com/ss-35.html
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/another-glycol-chiller-fermentor.591668/#post-7969946

though I do agree, a submersed coil would definitely be more efficient. and I suppose efficiency would be very important in the OP's case, since the ground water's temp wouldn't necessarily be controllable/consistent so every bit of thermal transfer would matter..

I think the hard-part about putting a coil through the lid of a corney keg would be how difficult it would be to actually close the lid -- I have to tilt the lids quite a lot to get them through the opening.. I think that would be difficult to do with a long coil hanging down. (though not impossible)

if permanent coils on your kegs isn't desirable, take a look at gotta-brew.com's glycol jacket. I started using their products (after the major PITA i had wrapping a coil around my first sanke) and I can't complain at all about the performance/ease of use.

 

[aangel]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone.

Looking at what's out there...think I'm gonna go simple. Inefficient but simple. Keezer + fermwrap heaters + temp controllers + keg cozies. I'll keep the keezer at the lowest common fermentation temperature and if any fermenter needs slightly higher i'll fermwrap + cozy it with a temp controller.

 

[day_trippr]

When I did my first sanke fermenter, I silver soldered a copper coil around the keg and then used thermally conductive silicone adhesive to fill in the gaps and edges around the coil.. this plus a layer of insulation ( I just use a keg jacket like you would for keeping a keg cold at a party) works pretty well. This could also be done to a corny keg.. [...]

Yup, the solder bead would have massively broadened the contact "ribbon" and commensurately reduced the thermal resistance. Add an insulator and the efficiency probably jumped by an order of magnitude or better vs a perfectly wrapped coil. But still well south of an immersion chiller.

Note I'm not advocating for or against any of these options - I use multiple fridges on my cold side stuff - but an IC could be rigged through an extra keg lid with a few inches of reinforced Tygon tubing to allow getting the whole thing positioned properly inside the keg before latching it down...

Cheers!