Multiple Jacketed Conicals with Heat & Cool

I am trying to visualize how this system would work. I haven't found anyone who is doing something like this. So please direct me if you know some online material that describes a way to do this. Let me outline some of my requirements:

1.) The ability to control >6 conicals (14g+) at once​

2.) The conicals must not be hidden in a fridge/freezer. Why have them if you hide them in a freezer?​

3.) Temperature control must be done with nothing wrapped around them. Thus, the jacket must be used for heating and cooling.​

4.) Ale temperatures are being discussed here. But my house fluctuates a lot, so heating and cooling is a must.
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5.) Heat/Cool system should be as discreet as possible. It will obviously be visible and make some noise, but it shouldn't be ridiculous.​

6.) We meticulously control the temperature of each beer. We really like to do different temp profiles for a split batch. So the conicals must be capable of being at around 20-30F temp differences from each other. ​

So with that said, how would this baby work? Here are some of my ideas...

A) Individual liquid source to heat/cool each conical. It would be water (glycol wouldn't be needed because the fluid temps would be comparable to beer temp). This would require individual tanks/pumps/controllers for each and every conical. The tanks would be sitting in a communal giant freezer and then heated with heat sticks separately to keep temps. This would be crazy inefficient/expensive. I only propose this option because the later ones start to reveal the beauty of this concept...​

B) One cool tank. One hot tank. Both glycol or both water. Cold tank is in a freezer or is coupled with an AC unit. Hot tank is controlled with a heat stick. Ball valves would be controlled automatically to circulate glycol for chilling and water for heating. This would be quite the expense in controllable ball valves! And how do you prevent the glycol and water from mixing too much? Maybe you just use water for both, because you wouldn't need the cold tank terribly cold for ale temps (must use freezer then). The big catch is... there could only be one conical being heated at a time and one being cooled at a time; however, you could probably just get a big enough pump (sump pump maybe) so that you could rock multiple pump lines at once (hope it's not too loud...I hear the sump pump from 2 floors away)​

C) Just forgo requirement #3 and have a heat blanket wrapped around each one and chill with a single glycol tank with controllable ball valves... but it would look so schlocky! Wires everywhere.....why even bother. AND you would have to heat the stagnant glycol in the jacket before you could heat the beer when the beer needs to be heated. But common sense would say that if heat is required, glycol wouldn't be needed very much for that beer so you wouldn't be heating cold glycol very often. Might as well stick with our 16 carboy fermentation chamber with a 54CF upright freezer. At least it is simple to look at. ​

The wife and I both love brewing so we have everything stored on the main level and even try to pass it off as decorative... so forgive the vanity, but aesthetics are a big part of this decision.


Please tell me any thoughts you have. I would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. I'm thinking the Brewer's Hardware 14G jacketed for the setup. And no, I don't have this kind of money laying around... yet

Lops

 

In for the responses. I will state that what you say in #2 is silly. I don't have conicals just so I can say "look at me" I have them to use as a tool in the craft. In fact after I'm done wrapping them in insulation they aren't gonna be much to look at.

Def sounds like brewers hardware/ any company that makes jacketed conicals is what you need. And how it sounds you wanna control temp I would venture to say your gonna be spending a lot of cash.

 

How about a space heater in the area to keep the ambient temp higher than your highest beer temp and then have a central glycol system. This might not be feasible if you make beers like Belgians that require higher temps or ramping heat.

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It matters when they're one of the only things on the main floor of our small house and the wife says "they have to look nice honey or we're never going to do it". I'm just happy she is even on board with the concept at all!

And if aesthetics didn't matter, we'd all wear rags, live in crappy homes that we never paint... and Apple would be out of business.

It's possible. We really only brew belgians. Ramp from 62-64 to 72ish. The problem is how hot it would have to be to maintain 72F beer temp... and what if we want to go crazy and have a beer ramp to 80 or even 90 for a 3724 saison. So you're right, we probably couldn't do it this way

 

I don' think that's silly at all. Everywhere I look on this site I see brewers who go for bling. It's nothing new. Some people like that. I like that (which I could spend the cash for it). IMHO there is nothing silly about that. Just like there's nothing silly about fermenting in buckets. People get to do their hobbies they way they want. That's what makes it fun.

Just like any other hobby. Some guys will build a goofy (in my opinion) looking car form a kit. Some will buy the Corvette. Some will buy the Corvette and add their own flair.

To each his own.

 

This isn't so hard, you will need a dual control temperature controller, 4 check valves on the input side and 4 solonoid valves on the output. Either the freezer or a converted air conditioner glycol chiller will work with water, the ac model needs a seperate pump to keep the water circulating to prevent freeze ups. I whole heartily agree that buying a pricy conical then hiding it in a freezer is a waste, one reason I like the chiller option on the Brewhemoth so much!

 

I would use the same medium for both heating and cooling to eliminate the mixing problem. One pump for each reservoir. I would put 3-way valves on the input and output of the jacket. You could then rig up an Arduino like system to control each fermentor.

 

How about brewhemoth style internal SS coil for chilling w/ glycol line chiller? Does your fermentation area regularly get below ale fermentation temps? If not, you might not need to add heat.

 

Why have a conical ? I have mine to make beer easily. its hidden in an ugly home made cabinet with a AC unit hanging off the side. ugly as sin, but does the job.

Some may have them to look nice, but not me. If it's a brewpub or u-brew place, then I can appreciate the need for it to look nice.

to each their own I guess.

 

Lopsy,

What climate are you in? I only ask because I was listening to a podcast about a place in Florida that cultured a local yeast that liked the local ambient temp for fermentation. I assume that you could do the same thing in a cooler climate since the particular yeast you would find would thrive in your climate. The benefit would be that you could ferment at ambient temp. Then control the temp with tap water circulation and a small hot water heater.

Could you easily add more insulation to the room in question and use a window unit to control temp?

I'm in the research phase and just ordered brewing supplies. Never brewed an oz of beer, so take this with a grain of salt. Using a local yeast is something I plan to attempt.

My 2cents

 

We are in the developemental stage for an internal heating/cooling device for the Brewhemoth. You are not the first who has had this problem of the ambient space being both too cold and too hot during a 24 hour cycle for the chosen yeast strain. I will run into that problem in the spring when I have highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's. It is cheaper to heat a bucket of water and the glycol chiller than to control the temperature of the entire room so I can use one or the other. Will post pics when the prototype is finished, should be end of this week or early next week.

 

Will it be able to be retrofitted to current brewhemoths?

 

I am picking up a True GEM-26 tomorrow to use with my conical. It has a window on 3 sides so it can be seen at all times.

 

A whole glass case built for multiple fermenters would be cool. Bloody expensive, but really cool.

My question still remains... No one seems to have the all in one answer.

If we used separate heat/cool tanks for each conical then we'd have to heat and cool each tank individually. Heating could be done with a heat stick, but cooling is tricky to do efficiently. We could have one extra tank that had multiple pumps in it (or ball valves), that recirculated extra cold glycol (-10C) through coils submerged in all the other tanks. The cold tank could be chilled with an AC unit.

And then each tank would only have to be simply recirculated through the conicals. I'd write some C++ for a microcontroller to know whether to keep the tank below the desired beer temp during active fermentation with ambient temp fairly high (I.e just pitched at 64 and want to maintain that while the room is 70). Or to have the tank reservoir above set temp for heating. This would minimize pumping time, but will increase fluctuations. Or the heat/cool tank could be set much closer to the desired beer temp. The algorithm could be played with until a satisfying equilibrium is reached.

Thoughts?

 

Put a three way valve on the jacket inlet and outlet. Open the valves to the left ports you have cooling, open to the right you have heating. Circulate your water/glycol 5-10*below your lowest desired fermentation temp of the group and 5-10* above your highest desired temp.

 

I like it. Simple. So you need "L" style 3-way solenoids so that you can turn certain conicals completely off. I know solenoids don't work like regular ball valves, so L isn't the right nomenclature but it gets the point across. Does anyone have a great source for 3-way L style solenoids? And what pipe diameter should I be looking at, 1/2"? Guess it depends on the jacket setup. Anyone know what brewer's hardware has on it's 15gal jacket in/out?

 

See my post #7.

I have not done any research into valves. Here is what a quick ebay search turned up.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-DN15-DC12V-3-Way-T-Port-Brass-Motorized-Ball-Valve-2-5-Wire-Control-/151206197533?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item233497791d

 

Since they are not isolated systems and if one "control zone" cycles more than the other, wouldn't the excess glycol left in the jacket eventually overfill that "control zone" and deplete the other?

 

Well the way I think of it is that everything begins full. That is, all jackets and both tanks are filled with fluid. And when a heat or cold cycle is operating the tank will always receive what ever it puts out. The fluids may get mixed due to a turnover, and this is why you should use one type of fluid. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

yeah i guess you're right. It was a bit difficult to envision at first. If this works it would really make heating and cooling a conical pretty straight forward.

 

Yup, now all we need is the moola!

Anybody have opinions on the best way to chill glycol? AC unit?

 

If they were both closed systems running at the same pressure then yes they would balance out and fluid wouldn't stack up in one system. With open systems you have the chance that one of the systems has more demand and lower delivery pressure to the conical that is cycling and the other half of the system will push fluid through the conical into the lower pressure side. It would only be during the couple seconds the valve is cycling, but may end up stacking fluid in one reservoir. you could do an overflow pipe between open reservoirs or just do manual adjustments if it turns into an issue. A pair of closed systems would be best, but I'm not sure what you were planning for your heating/cooling systems.

Ignore the airside but this is how it would be piped.

 

What would be the reason to have open systems?

 

They are simpler and more suitable to diy.

Wasn't sure what you had in mind for cooling and heating equipment, but a some people here do the cooler with the ac evap coil submerged in a glycol bath for their diy chiller and just use a rubbermaid with fish tank heater for heating. you have something lined up for a chiller yet?

 

Nope, the world is my oyster right now. Still conceptualizing the entire thing. That's why I really wanted a good feel from the crowd before I went down the wrong rabbit hole.

 

How often do you think you will have to go from heating to cooling or vice versa on a batch? If you didn't mind swapping over a pair of connections you could have just a single solenoid on each fermenter. With separate heating and cooling headers you could connect up the fermenter to whichever system you needed, but would only have heating or cooling available.

 

I think option B with automated ball valves. Use the same liquid whether water or glycol in each reservoir.

I have my brewhemoths set up with an internal coil for cooling and flex watt underneath reflectix insulation. It doesn't look too bad....but it's not bling bling either.


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Manual connection transfers is not optimal. Often I'm away for a few days and want to start a temp ramp or something. Right now I have an arduino that controls the freezer and all the beer temps with a Raspberry Pi hooked up to its serial interface. I can SSH into the Pi from anywhere and change all the temps or write some code to start a temp ramp schedule if I didn't have one going already... Etc. So I'd like this conical based system to be able to do all of the same stuff and more. The microcontroller aspect of the system is no problem, It's trying not to spend $10K before we even buy a conical that has me up at night. And that's where the overall picture needs filling in. That's what you guys have been so great at helping me with!


And then there are the details... Like how much power do the solenoids need and thus how many SSRs do I need. What kind of pumps, what anti-corrosive agent to use if we go with RO. Hard plumb it, or go with silicone, Teflon. How to keep it quiet. How to keep it from having the electric meters spin off into orbit...


So to summarize, the status quo is:

One hot tank, one cool tank. Thinking glycol so that an AC unit can be used. With three way valves on the input and output of each jacket. Heat stick controls hot tank, maintained by microcontroller. Cold tank is coupled with AC unit, maintained by microcontroller. One small pump in each tank to keep temps from stratifying. Large pump (capable of pumping to all conicals at once) in each tank to circulate through jackets. Microcontroller will turn 3-way solenoids to cool/heat/off. And pumps will only be on if >0 conicals need them. Once again I will couple it to a Linux board in order to have control over schedules, remote changes and reset override (ensures that arduino reset doesn't get rid of remote changes). Also the Linux board uploads everything to a google doc to automatically graph all temps.

 

Sounds good so far. However, I don't think the small pumps will be necessary.

 

How would you prevent stratification if one pump isn't used often? And thus, how would you get an accurate temperature reading?

 

I wonder of you could build an inline rims tube to heat each conical jacket to allow multiple temperatures.... just a brain fart I had... this is way over my head as far as engineering goes. Maybe have one hot water reservoir that maintains a set base temperature and then each conical gets its own rims tube to heat the water up further.

 

I like the creativity! It would work, but might be a little overkill. With one hot tank set to 5-10 F above the hottest conical, each conical could be kept at a different temp by changing how frequently the hot liquid gets pumped to it.