New Product! Cool Brewing Fermentation Cooler

I'm wondering how does it keep it cool if you need to use a blow off tube during fermentation?

 

I have used a blow off tube twice with this bag. I have a one gallon bucket that the LHBS gives when you buy LME. I filled that bucket 3/4th full and placed it in the bag next to the fermenter. Then I connected the blow off tube to the fermenter and stuck the other end down in the water bucket. The lid of the bag holds blow off tube in the water. It was very easy.

Another time I didn't use the bucket but instead filled the bag with water so the fermenter was sitting in a water bath in the bag. Then I just put the blow tube down in that water. This was easy too but I like the method with the small bucket better.

 

It depends on much ice you add. But I would say in less than 24 hours your temp will be in the 60's. With 85F wort you will need more ice. I would try 4 2L bottles first then adjust if that is too much or too little.

Someone else may have a better guess where to start.

 

Just placed my order last night and already received my tracking number. I was hoping to brew this weekend, but I really would like to test this out, may have to delay that brew session until next. That is, unless I get lucky and it magically shows up by tomorrow!

From the reviews, this will be perfect for me, always opted for the unused bath tub as a make shift swamp cooler. I live in Seattle, where it rarely gets over 80 degrees ambient, and never over 75 in my house.

 

Well I ordered mine tonight and already received a tracking#. I plan on testing ASAP, between my travels for work at least. Hopefully by mid-august I will have a kolsch report with the cool-brewing fermentation cooler. Thanks for the advice!

 

I would suggest you get it down a bit more before you put it in the bag (if possible) Put the fermenter in a bigger bucket with ice water and let it sit for 3-4 hours. That should bring it down to the mid 70's.
As long as it's covered, while you should be ok with 85 degrees overnight, I personally feel better getting it below 80 as soon as possible.

If you make a starter and can get the temp below 75, pitch it and then put it in the bag with some frozen bottles or ice pack.

 

Nice!!

 

I just ordered my second bag! I reallly need it. I've used one constantly since I've gotten in (more than 9 weeks in a row) and can't do more than 1 beer at a time so I needed a second one. My pipeline is getting low and with 3 taps, it goes much faster than I can make it but this will allow me to do 2 batches at a time and not have to wait the 3 weeks between batches.
I love this thing!

 

I just bought one!

 

Im in SoCal, with a very warm garage. This hold 65-70 degrees all day with a liter of ice. Very nice drop.

 

Mine arrived over the weekend. Haven't used it yet, but after reading about the sagging bag, I got an idea. Cost me all of about $3 and 30 minutes of my time (now that I have the dimensions, it can probably be made in about 5-10 minutes). I wanted something a bit more sturdy than just a cut off soda bottle.

I bought 10' of 1/2" inch PVC and 6 elbow joints. Cut four 13" pieces and two 23" pieces. You could just as easily do a square around your carboy, but I was trying to do it with fewer materials, so the triangle worked. You could also reduce the shorter a pieces a bit and still get the same results (I'll probably end up doing this).

Looking forward to using it for the first time this week. I just had to dump a 5 gal bunch because my temps got too high.

 

Nice idea but I'm not put off by the tilting bag at all. And, you can use a plastic cup on top of a pail fermenter if you use one.

 

Great idea! I bet if you had the dimensions of the PVC pipes when you went to home depot or lowe's they would cut the PVC for you. Then putting it together would take only a few minutes.

 

Hi, So far the Fermwrap heater is working great with our Cool Brewing Cooler! With my current testing the Fermwrap alone is rising the wort temperature around 20 degrees over the room temperature. When placed in the Cool Brewing Cooler with the Fermwrap it is rising the wort temperature a consistent 40 degrees over the room temperature. The cooler seems to be holding up great so far to the heat! I will follow up in another 2 weeks just to make sure it holds up well to long term heat.

 

This is pretty cool.

You might see two 10gal rubbermaid coolers hit the HBT classifieds coupled with an order for two of your coolers!

 

I just got one in the mail I cannot wait to try it out!!!! So cool!

 

Just ordered one. I discovered this past weekend that I suck at building things with insulation foam. This is what I managed to come up with trying to build my SoF:



Excited to use this instead, should be much easier, and less of a headache

 

Used my cooler on my current batch. I've just been using a few of those cold packs and am easily keeping temps down where I want them.

On top of that, I ordered another one today, and I had a tracking number from UPS in about two hours. Great product and great service.

 

I can't wait to use mine. Have to agree about the great service!

 

Thanks for the feedback! We pride our self on shipping as quickly as possible and providing best customer service we can!

 

I'm glad I came across this thread before I went out and bought another appliance. It's hard to explain to the wife why I need another fridge/freezer when I've already got 2 dedicated to beer.

As someone in a previous post had mentioned, I'd be curious to see how this would work for lagers in a fridge that runs at serving temps. I'd like to keep my fridge at around 40 F as I've got my serving kegs in there, and use a heat wrap to bring the temp up to 50 F inside the carboy cooler for lager fermentaions. Not the most efficient use of energy, but I bet you'd have pretty decent temp control without having to drink warm beer. Has anyone tried this yet?

 

I can't wait to get mine tomorrow and start making lagers. How much ice should I use to keep the temps appropriate for lagering?

 

Just a follow up 12 days later our fermentation cooler is still working great with the Fermwrap. It is staying a consistent 40 degrees warmer then the outside temperature with a 40 watt Fermwrap inside our fermentation cooler.

 

Hi,

This will depend on how many degrees cooler you need to be to room temperature. In our testing in a 80+ degree room around 1 frozen gallon jug lowered actively fermenting wort temperature around 10 degrees.

Cheers to lagers!

 

This thing is awesome. After a failed SOF build, I was going to give a swamp cooler a try but didn't really feel like dealing with the mess. This product seemed like a great alternative.

+1 on customer service - I ordered mine through Amazon and received a shipping notification within hours!

I received my cooler earlier this week, brewed on Tuesday. I was able to get my wort down to about 90 degrees quickly, but I didn't feel like waiting to get it further down to pitching temperatures. I threw my better bottle with 90 degree wort into the Cool Brewing cooler with three (3) 1G jugs of ice, and the following morning it had dropped to 72 degrees so I pitched.

Another 24 hours later, I was able to drop the temperature down to 62 degrees and my primary fermentation is chugging along wonderfully! I went to swap out the ice jugs last night, assuming they were melted and discovered there was still a significant amount of ice left in both jugs - so I left them another 12 hours.

Temperature is holding great and I am really happy with my purchase.

Pros: Cheaper than SOF, low tech cooling solution, cleaner than swamp cooler
Cons: None come to mind, loving it so far!

 

Do you think I could use this with a kegging setup? I imagine that kegged beer should be easier to cool than fermenting beer.

On a different note, I put my saison with a heating pad in the chamber last night and this morning I could see that the yeast activity had ramped up quite a bit.

 

I used this last night and I used one liters because I misread the approximate calculation. Even still it lowered the temp with a blow off tube attached to stay in range. Now to only follow directions!

I love this thing!

 

I will be your guinea pig. I am going to try this. Just ordered it.

Though, I am wondering if it makes more sense to just turn my thermostat to 65F in my apartment, then cool down the fermenter to 50F using it?

 

Has anyone tried using their cooler for cold-crashing? If so how much ice did you have to use to get it to sufficient temperature?

 

I ran across this thread today... 10 minutes later I ordered two bags. I brew in a small NYC apartment so there's definitely no room for another fridge... this looks like my solution!

 

This product does not really advertise that it could work for lagering, but I am going to give it a shot. My apartment is at about 65F, so I think I can get my lager down to the 50F I am looking for. Will let you all know how it works out..

 

Sounds like a good idea to pre-chill a keg when you know the keg in the kegerator will be kicked in a day or two. I always hate having to wait to taste a new keg until the next day!

Well, I am definitely ordering this. I live in a small apt in NY and I stick to saisons and belgian golden strong in the summers. Now, I dont have to!!

 

Tried out the cooler for the first time yesterday, and wasn't disappointed. Using 3 frozen 2 litre bottles, I brought the temperature down to 58F from 69F in 12 hours. Good thing I'm using notty yeast, because i didn't expect that much of a temp drop in that short of time.

Super simple, super effective, and super easy. Highly recommended. :rockin:

 

Ordered one. Can't wait to try out for this weekends brew.

 

I am having tremendous success keeping my lager at a steady 50/52 (I use adhesive temp strips, so probably 51. Ambient temperature ~70) I froze five 3 liter Poland Spring bottles, put four in, and each morning and afternoon I replace a watery one with a frozen one. It is fermenting away, and I couldn't be happier. This product should definitely advertise the fact it can be used to cool down to lager temps, as that would be a big selling point for folks.

 

Nice! I just may have to try making my first lager!

 

I live in a small NYC apartment and don't have room for a fermentation chamber... i was so excited by this thread that I rushed out and ordered one before looking at the dimensions. Just received my cooler yesterday... fast shipping. Haven't used it yet but it looks like a quality product. Only thing is... this thing is HUGE! Seriously though they should make a smaller version for those of us that ferment in 3 gallon carboys. Anyway, I can't wait to use this thing....

 

Thank you for the feedback! Cheers to lagers!

 

I have posted in this thread a number of times about how pleased I am with this cooler 'bag'. I even bought a second one to get me thru the summer.
However, I have even more proof that my money was extremely well spent.......
I live just outside of New Orleans (Metairie) a suburb and as some may know, we were lucky enough, almost exactly 7 years to the day to have another troubling hurricane that was supposed to be an easy one (I've been thru dozens in my life) but this one dumped lots of rain but worse, knocked out much more power than most so called 'small' storms. My power went out Tuesday night at 9:15 and I just got it restored on Sunday, at 11:30 am. Almost 5 full days without power. I have a generator that I used for my two refrigerators, my kegerator (priorities man!) and an over the air tv and a small fan to watch my sweat move around my body.

I had brewed a batch of Breakwater Pale Ale 2 weeks ago and it was too early when power went out to keg it. So, since my generator kept my freezers frozen, I kept changing the frozen bottles out as normal. Yesterday the temperature in my house hit 85 at 5pm and only went down to 84 at 6 am. This little bag kept my beer at 68 degrees. It's been keeping it at 64 but I could have added more frozen packs to keep it at 64 for 68 worked fine for me.
Without this bag, I would have ditched the beer or had to work much harder with a swamp cooler and a mess. Something I didn't have time for or want to do when I already had enough on my mind. I didn't need convincing, but anyone thinking about this and sitting on the fence is just wasting time. This product will always have my seal of approval!

 

Im ordering one now! BUT I also hope you make a smaller version for 3 gallon carboys, etc.

Thanks!