Water chillers for fermentation control

[brewhaus88]

I am looking to upgrade my fermentation vessel soon to a 14 gal conical. I would really like to avoid having to buy a bigger fridge just to house this thing for fermentation. I have been looking at using a water chiller to flow through a cooling coil inside the vessel. While this should work with 80% of the beer I brew, I am unsure how well it would do with lagering beer.

Has anyone had any experience cooling with water coolers? Will it cool down to 40 degrees okay?

 

[lablover]

I've been using this cooling coil with an Inkbird and small submersible pump in an ice bath for my 5 gallon batches for the last few weeks. It works great for those. I've done two ales at 65 F and a lager at 52 F in my place and it has been a hot summer. I got my lager as cool as 45 F by insulating my fermenter with a blanket, but it would not go below that with ice water. It's probably not big enough for a 14 gallon fermenter, but maybe they can customize something for you with a larger coil. I had to work with them on my stopper size and they were very responsive.

 

[yowzers]

I've been using this cooling coil with an Inkbird and small submersible pump in an ice bath for my 5 gallon batches for the last few weeks. It works great for those. I've done two ales at 65 F and a lager at 52 F in my place and it has been a hot summer. I got my lager as cool as 45 F by insulating my fermenter with a blanket, but it would not go below that with ice water. It's probably not big enough for a 14 gallon fermenter, but maybe they can customize something for you with a larger coil. I had to work with them on my stopper size and they were very responsive.

I have been using these as well and I can vouch for its effectiveness.

 

[lablover]

Did you find something that worked for you?