I recently saw a post where someone had rigged a temp controller to pump the water from their swamp cooler through a chiller in an ice bath and back into the swamp cooler. Seemed like a reasonable system for the budget minded, so I decided to start looking for the equipment to make it happen. I needed a chilling system anyway and had been looking at the General Lee system from Jaded Brewing, designed especially for places with warm ground water. I think Houston qualifies! For a temp controller, I have been reading good things about the InkBird unit, which sells for around $38 on Amazon.
About two weeks ago I was reviewing Craigslist and what did I find, but a guy selling a used General Lee system, compete and in good working order. In addition, he had a 6.5 gal Big Mouth Bubbler. I had been thinking of getting one of those too.
I had been planning to set up the system with the carboy inside of a 60 quart Igloo cube cooler to hold temps as long as possible. But after getting the Big Mouth home, I realized that it was narrow enough to fit inside of my 10 gallon Igloo hot liquor tank, with about an inch or two of space for the water needed to maintain the temps. With a Brew night planned for this weekend, I quickly placed an order for the needed InkBird controller.
Well, this afternoon I got the whole system set up. Currently I am only measuring the water temp around the carboy. I have the InkBird set to turn the pump on when the water reaches 66 and run until it's down to 63. At this time I'm not able to easily determine the wort temp, but I should be in the 64-68 range, which works for now. The system has only run twice since I got it running about 4 hours ago, and it takes about 5 or so minutes to drop the water from 66 to 63.
Next update is to obtain a two hole lid for the Big Mouth and a thermowell so I can run the Inkbird probe down into the wort, instead of measuring the water around the carboy. At that time I will probably narrow the temperature range from 3 degrees down to 2, or maybe even 1.5. I will also look into fabricating something to insulate the top of the carboy/igloo cooler better than a wet towel.
Hopefully this post will help someone else who also wants to control their fermenting temps on a budget.
About two weeks ago I was reviewing Craigslist and what did I find, but a guy selling a used General Lee system, compete and in good working order. In addition, he had a 6.5 gal Big Mouth Bubbler. I had been thinking of getting one of those too.
I had been planning to set up the system with the carboy inside of a 60 quart Igloo cube cooler to hold temps as long as possible. But after getting the Big Mouth home, I realized that it was narrow enough to fit inside of my 10 gallon Igloo hot liquor tank, with about an inch or two of space for the water needed to maintain the temps. With a Brew night planned for this weekend, I quickly placed an order for the needed InkBird controller.
Well, this afternoon I got the whole system set up. Currently I am only measuring the water temp around the carboy. I have the InkBird set to turn the pump on when the water reaches 66 and run until it's down to 63. At this time I'm not able to easily determine the wort temp, but I should be in the 64-68 range, which works for now. The system has only run twice since I got it running about 4 hours ago, and it takes about 5 or so minutes to drop the water from 66 to 63.
Next update is to obtain a two hole lid for the Big Mouth and a thermowell so I can run the Inkbird probe down into the wort, instead of measuring the water around the carboy. At that time I will probably narrow the temperature range from 3 degrees down to 2, or maybe even 1.5. I will also look into fabricating something to insulate the top of the carboy/igloo cooler better than a wet towel.
Hopefully this post will help someone else who also wants to control their fermenting temps on a budget.
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