Metzen's Mini Fridge Glycol Chiller Conversion

[sensei247]

It's all very scary no matter how it's sliced. I have seen it done successfully here on HBT, and have read of fails as well (not many though), so extreme care is the only recommendation I have...

Cheers!

So far so good! Ill send pics to this thread later on in the event it can help someone in the future with this.

 

[veesicks]

Bumping again. Just found the perfect Haier fridge on Facebook Marketplace. To be clear: One should have both the pump AND fridge on a temperature controller? Or is the fridge on one controller while the pump is on another? I'm planning to do this build for a carboy cooling jacket as opposed to an immersion chiller within a conical. Seems to me you'd want the fridge running to maintain the glycol temperature as steady as possible while only running the pump to coincide with temperature changes for your fermentation.

 

[kdw2pd]

Just built this up using an old GE mini-fridge. Does anyone have suggestions about reducing load on the compressor when trying to bring a fermenter down to pitch temp? I knocked out at 88F today. Would running a fan over the compressor to keep it cooler help? I'm setting the glycol solution (2/3 distilled water 1/3 glycol) temp to 50F. When I run the pump, it jumps up real quick in temp, and the fridge gets quite hot.

@veesicks: you'll want the pump to be on a temp controller hooked up to your fermenter, and then the fridge on a separate temp controller to keep the glycol solution at temp.

 

[Gruel]

Maybe run a fan blowing cold air (from an A/C?) at the condenser of the fridge. Taking heat out of wort takes quite a bit of cooling; heat capacity of water is very high (which is one reason why cold beer is so popular).

 

[veesicks]

This is how my build turned out. Works like a charm. Haven't used it to chill below 65 degrees thus far because I've only brewed ales with it, but holy crap it works like a champion.

 

[Gruel]

Nice bathrobe (or towel?)!

 

[MaltAndMayhem]

I did my own spin on this. I got a hold of an upright freezer for a measly 80 bucks. This upright freezer had the coils between the drawers and I was able to bend the middle one down into the drawer, fill it with glycol and use it for a glycol chiller.

I did a writeup on this on reddit:

It worked rather well, much better than expected. I was able to drop the temperature of the water in my chronical from 23 degrees celsius to 4.5 degrees celsius is 12 hours, and the freezer was not even running all the time...

 

[Nate R]

I did my own spin on this. I got a hold of an upright freezer for a measly 80 bucks. This upright freezer had the coils between the drawers and I was able to bend the middle one down into the drawer, fill it with glycol and use it for a glycol chiller.

I did a writeup on this on reddit:

It worked rather well, much better than expected. I was able to drop the temperature of the water in my chronical from 23 degrees celsius to 4.5 degrees celsius is 12 hours, and the freezer was not even running all the time...

Cool.
Since the coils are in the glycol mix, it is much more effcient heat transfer than using open air in the freezer.