looking for a mid range upgrade to my temp control

Moved to a new house last winter and over the last year i've learned my current temp control setup just isn't reliable. I had been using a water bath with small aquarium chiller and heater to control the baths temp and just set my buckets in it. Worked great in the old house where basement temps were much more consistent then the new one, but now the chiller just cant keep up with high 70s and active fermentation.

So now i find myself with much more space and im willing to toss a little money at the problem to make my brew life simpler. Im also now doing 10 gal batches and am considering moving to a single fermentor for ease. I had my eye on the SS brewtech 14 gal systems, but when you add the FTSS for temp control the cost gets up there pretty quick. The alternative i was looking at was a chest freezer and just sticking with my plastic buckets.

My research resulted in either too much money spent on the solution or all the ideas were how to do it super cheap. So anyone have any advice on a solution thats not thousands of dollars, but will still make my brewing simple and efficient and reliable temp control?

thanks

 

A freezer is a fairly cheap solution. Look for scratch and dent freezers at Lowes, HD, etc... I'd go 7 Cu Ft minimum. They're usually about half the price, have a warranty, and are essentially new. Add a $20 controller, some electrical supplies, wood, and some foam board, and you're in business. If you're careful, you can build the system for less than $300. Buckets or carboys will work fine. My 9 cu ft model can hold 4 carboys.

 

Yeah thats one of the options im considering and i already have multiple controllers to run it with. I was just wondering if there was maybe a way to get some bling involved as not not specifically trying to go the cheap route. I just dont want to drop 2k on nice conicals and glycol chillers.

 

Humping 5 gallon buckets full of wort in and out of a chest freezer would get old really quick. And pulling them out to rack will send all that settled out break and trub back into your beer (although if you pull them out the night before, you should be alright.)

The SS Brewtech conicals are the way I'm planning on going. They're not cheap, but compared to what a 14 gallon conical went for just two years ago, I'm impressed by their pricing. I do agree that adding the FTSs stuff starts making it expensive, and I'm PERSONALLY not a fan of their controllers.

If you can stretch to their Brewmaster Edition 14 gallon ($775 with free shipping) then you have the coil already installed (plus tasty triclover goodness). All you need then is the same pond pump you've been using, a cheap reptile heater mat, and something like an STC-1000. Cooler full of ice water, with two holes in the lid to allow the lines for the cooler to run, and you're all set.

 

I totally agree on every point of yours and it's exactly why i posted about it. The Brewmaster 14 gal concical would make my life so easy as long as i found a way to move it from garage to fermenting area once filled. I was thinking the same thing as you about it having the coils installed already because I've got an stc-1000 dual wired for heat and cold on my current setup. Ive been running through the how much do i save by brewing calcs for 2 days now trying to justify the cost .

I think im going to pull the trigger as soon as ive got some spare cash.

 

If you don't have to deal with stairs, then wheels are your friend. They sell their own branded ones at $50 a set, but you can get a set for half that at your local Home Depot (The threads on the bottom of the legs are standard 3/8"-16). I'm planning on keeping everything in the garage, so easy peasy to just wheel stuff around in there.

I get it completely - the better part of $800 isn't a tiny amount to lash out. But once you go conical, you'll honestly wonder why you never did without it. Yeast was a big one for me. Depending on how much you brew, the ability to easily harvest yeast starts paying you back REALLY quick. (At least that's one of the things I told myself!) I know it can be done from any vessel, but doing it from a conical is soooo easy.

 

Thanks for pointing out the standard wheel size, that was my plan to wheel it around. If the temp control works well enough i can just keep it in the garage as well.

Now that ive decided this im starting to wonder how you keg from this or other things i take for granted like garvity draining or plain old dumping from the bucket. Those ports are quite low to just gravity feed. Im also wondering why they only have TC fittings with barbs. I already have lots of hoses with quick disconnects, know of anyone that sells those 1.5 TC fittings with standard npt threads?

 

I've always thought about a conical, but the thought of putting all my money into a single fermentation device stops me. If I have to spend $800 on a conical, I'm only going to get one. Whenever I brew, I'll tie that up for at least a few weeks.

I can do 2-3 different beers at one time using my better bottles and my freezer. I can swap them in and out of my freezer as needed. I have no problem with the weight. I use carboy handles.

I even built my freezer with 2 controllers so I can do different temperatures at the same time.

I like the flexibility of my freezer and it's fairly cheap - like me.

 

There is a middle of the road solution with going with stout or stout clone conicals for a couple hundred bucks less and using cool zone jackets which fit them perfect or better yet if you dont mind diy you can use blue 1.5" discharge hose wrapped around the conicals and insulate the whole this with double foil faced bubble wrap.. thats what I did and it works excellent... I have 21gallons bubbling away in 2 different conicals now... ones at 55 and the other 66, and I still have two more plumbed in off the same chiller im not using at the moment. the chiller runs about as much as a fridge.
I use a chiller, some pvc pipe $2 soleniod vavles which are turned on and off by stc 1000 units.. very simple really but you can go even simpler with individual aquarium pumps for each conical and cheap temp controllers like the inkbird. when you look at the fact that you can have 3 conicals for the price of 2 equivalent ss ones well...and save about $180 on a cooling solution for each..

these are a great alternative too...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stainless-S...495988?hash=item4afe53f8f4:g:ZBkAAOSwvgdW3drc
or these if you have no desire to go over 5-6gallons.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stainless-S...504035?hash=item4afe541863:g:Fy8AAOSwMgdXw3~W

The advantage here is they are only 12" in diameter so the larger carboy cool zone jacket fits perfect for $60-70

plus no seams and fittings or coils to remove and clean each use...

 

So why spend $800 on a conical for 10 gallon brews when they start out at so much less? Its not like theres only one choice. The ss ones are some american made work of art , they are chinese made and have a brushed finish which is a pain to keep clean...

 

heres one with threaded fittings.
(more to keep clean though)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/15-Gallon-M...082194?hash=item3a73c03f92:g:as0AAOSwOdpX1DbM

 

Ive always gone the cheap route and dont think in all my years of brewing ive spent more than 1k total on all of my equipment combined. My most expensive piece is my boil kettle and even that i DIYed the valves to save a little cash. Everything else is either cheap or DIY like my brewstand i built out of 2x3s for under $100.

I was a hair away from just getting a chest freezer and being done with it, but im ready to actually spend some coin on some nice bling. The chronical has a much smaller footprint, saves me the racking to carboy step, and the 14 gal lets me do my batches in a single fermentor saving even more time on cleanup.

Dang, those are almost half the price! Thank you, this is exactly the type of response i was looking for. I had no idea Stout fermentors even existed or that they made those cool zone jackets. The jacket is actually better for the occasional 5gal batch in a 14gal fermentor. Brewtech states in this case only 40-45% of the coil will be in the wort which really reduces its efficiency.

They don't look as cool as the brewtech ones, but who can complain about looks when its that much cheaper. They also come with clover clamps which is nice. Ill have to do some research on those. Thanks!

 

well coming from somone who has both a brushed stainless conical and a couple polished stainless ones, the polished stainless is a lot easier to clean and keep clean... plus the stout conicals are made of heavier gauge stainless at least it feels that way to me. I ordered some SS brewing ones for a friend so Ive had some hands on time with them. They are nice but I dont think they are better in any way than the stout I have honestly. I have no weldless futtings or threads to worry about and no coils to pull out and clean... and as you said they cool great even with 5 gallon batches.. I can take mine right down into the 40s without problems and if I replaced the temp controller in my chiller and took that down lower to freezing im sure I could do the same with the conicals.

 

For under $200 you can get a new chest freezer shipped big enough to acomodate 10 gallons in 2 carboys/buckets/better bottles, and an STC 1000 DIY controller or an off the shelf Inkbird.

I have both and the Inkbird is a good option.

The doom and gloom of lifting carboys and having to wait an inordinate amount of time to allow things to settle does not fit with my experiences.

Chest Freezer and fancy DIY STC 1000


Beer Racked minutes after lifting the carboy out of freezer.



This lifting related trub worry is a non-issue in my experience.

 

im planning on buying one of these tonight... for a keezer though... At least this way the heavy lifting is limited to a one way argument where they go in heavy and come out light I use an almost identical stc box for my current keg cooler (which Ive outgrown).

My question to you is how many beers do you ferment at once and if multiple than how do you do a lager at the same time as say an ale like im doing now? If you use heater wraps for individual temp control your freezer will be constantly fighting this no?

and unless your a weightlifter the lifting of 10gallon fermenters in and out of that thing would get old very quick and you would be limited to splitting to multiple 6 gallon carboys and buckets right? Im still in my 30s but even I would not be up to the task.
I used to use a glass front cooler in the same fashion for my single 5 gallon carboys and it worked great but for multiple larger fermenters I think their are better chiller based alternatives but I learn new things everyday which is why im asking.

 

I already lift in and out of my fermentor now and i dont have issues with stirring things up much at all. The lifting aspect is also a fun excuse to say i dont need the gym for weight lifting.

Theres no question chest freezers work well for temp control and they are a low cost way of doing it to boot. They do have a bigger footprint though and im still dealing with racking and multiple vessels especially with my 10 gal batches. Moving to a single larger fermentor undoubtedly saves me a bunch of time and work.

As far as Stout vs Brewtech, well theres 3 small things i found so far that add up to a major negative. They don't appear to have a way to mount casters, theres no thermowell port, and theres no sampling valve. The 775 cost of the brewmaster version is also not apples to apples. The standard 14 gal chronical at 495 is only slightly more than Stouts 12.5 and both are nearly identical. If i wasn't looking at the brewmaster for the coils i would probably go with the stout conical.

Theres not a lot of info out there on the cool zone jacket and DIY versions of that will probably be even less efficient than the original. Inner coils of the Brewtech though will def be more efficient than everything else and with the thermowell in close proximity to the coils temp overshooting should never be an issue.

I know its big bucks, but 2 days of research really have me feeling like it's worth every penny.

 

the blue discharge hose I use wrapped around my other 12.5 conical will actually make the inside walls of the conical frost up when I tested it empty... I am willing to be it works faster than the internal coil.. In fact I still have 100ft of stainless coil I had bought to got that route but abandoned the idea as soon as I saw how fast the wrap works..

as far as a sampling valve? thats what I use the valve on the side for and yes stout does make them with or without the thermowell http://conical-fermenter.com/Non-Jacketed-Conical-Fermenters/ but I use long thermowells like coolzone sells but I made my own with jb weld and stainless line that drop in from the opening in the top off of a tee so they are closer to the center and not influenced by the temp of the sidewall and to minimize any overshoot. Here are some poor pictures to show what I mean... I put the foam on my stout just because I had it laying around even though its really not needed.. The foil faced stuff with foil hvac tape works great to hold temps. I do clean in place with this setup so I never added the quick disconnects for the cooling lines. there are more pics in my build thread below in my signature. I have less than $1100 in my whole conical temp setupwithout the chiller but including all 4 conicals I use cheap 24v heating strips which are also wired to the stc 1000 controllers but a person could use any heat strips with this or the inkbird controllers.
Another member here http://www.homebrewtalk.com/member.php?u=57639 also uses an almost identical setup but he made his own chiller from a $50 ac unit and a cooler.

 

Heater. I don't need one. The freezers sit in my house at room temperature. To heat I just set the temperature and let it rise passively.

I used to use a heater fan but realized it's needless for me unless I was to make a saison.



I ususally ferment 1 beer at a time as the beer is done by the time I brew again. Just had two in there for a short overlap of a few days. Not an issue as fermentation was complted in a week in the first. I just swithed the probe to the next fermentor and off to the races with beer 2.

I keg most beers, ales and lagers alike, getting them off the yeast and into a CO2 filled keg anywhere from 10-15 days post brew depending on the data.

I brew at most every two weeks (exception was last two batches 1 week apart) so there is rarely more than 1 fermenting.

I have a second freezer for lagering that fits three kegs. Spending a few hundred dollars on fermentation control/lagering setup is worth every penny to me as I couldn't brew the beers I like to drink without them; not in Texas.

10 gallon fermentors. I don't have any. The freezer fits two 6 gallon carboys/buckets/better botles etc. Lifting these is no biggie.

Internal view

 

My actual costs:
Used but almost new 5cf Haier chest freezer from CL: $50 (new at Walmart its $150 + tax)
Wood for collar: $10
Computer fan: $5
DIY STC 1000 controller box: $40
Replace thermostat in freezer when it died after a couple months: $15

Total cost $120. I would attach a picture but photobucket is down atm. This has been almost rock solid for over 3 years except for the Thermostat replacement which was easy to install.