Temperature Controlled Sanke Fermenter

I started working on this last night and figured I would put up a build thread. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info on this build so here it goes...

What I am trying to do is wrap copper tubing around a sanke keg, insulate it with reflectix, then use an STC 1000 to pump ice cold water through the coils to cool down the fermenting wort. I purchased 50ft of 3/8" copper tubing and was originally planning on having 3 wraps around each section of the keg, soldered together. However it was really difficult to get the copper to behave and it ended up not looking anywhere near as nice as I had envisioned.

 

Here is a picture so far

 

JB weld to the rescue!

 

The duck tape was used to hold it in place until I could the JB Weld SteelStik in place to hold the copper in place. I used a mallet to pound the copper closer to the keg and increase the surface area a bit. Next I will wrap it in the reflectix, solder on some fittings, build the STC 1000 and put it through a test run. Hopefully it ends up working the way it should.

Ill keep this updated as I finish it up and report back with the results of the test

 

Lifesaver!

 

Love it!!

TD


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

I used it to stop a leak in a transmission block after smashing up my car, got a lot more use out of that tranny for $6

 

I use the cooling jacket from http://www.gotta-brew.com/ with an extension panel. Then I wrap the outside with reflectix. Works amazing! One of the nice things is I can easily remove it for when I clean the sanke. I first started using a tank of cool water to run through the line controlled by an stc-1000+, which worked ok. A few weeks ago I built a glycol chiller and wahoo! Can cold crash and everything now. The jackets aren't too terribly expensive for how easy they make it and what you get out of it. Plus if I want to do a carboy I just un-velro from the sanke it and move it over. I've been wanting to do a write up for some time about my build, but haven't had the time with getting married and work will be quite busy for the next few weeks. But you are right in that information about these builds is quite sparse and took some experimentation to finally get it right.

 

The cooling jacket would be something to think about for next time. The copper is just such a hassle to get wrapped around the keg.

 

Here are a couple pictures of the setup. Everything appears to be working as it should so far.

 

I put 10 gallons of 96*F water. I'm not sure why I decided to do 96 since I wont ever have wort in there that hot...I guess it was just to see the potential of how well it cools. I put 14 pounds of ice into the igloo cooler. As you can tell the lid isn't on the cooler. I am deciding between just drilling a hole for the tubes or to install a pass through pipe. Insulating the lines carrying the ice water might be in order as well.

 

And here is a chart tracking the temps over the last 2 hours. It's not dropping crazy fast but certainly consistent. The ice is melted and the water in the cooler is currently 44 degrees. I imagine the ice would last longer if the lid was sealed and the water in the keg wasn't almost 100*

Time Temp C Temp F
0 Min 35.5 95.9
15 min 34.6 94.28
30 min 33.6 92.48
45 min 32.6 90.68
60 min 31.7 89.06
75 min 30.9 87.62
90 min 30.1 86.18
105 min 29.3 84.74
120 min 28.6 83.48

 

And in the end it didn't matter what the copper coil looks like because it's covered by the great looking insulation

 

Ha seriously. It came out looking a lot better than I thought it would. Temp is still dropping too:rockin:

 

So many small British breweries control fermentation temps like this. -In both round and square fermenters.

I can't tell you how many breweries I saw simply using water-filled coils wrapped around fermenters with insulation then wrapped around the whole thing.

These are small commercial breweries, but some of them have been around for a couple of decades working this way.


Adam

 

That's kind of where I got the idea for this. A small local brewery does the same thing with their 3 bbl fermenters except with glycol running through the copper.

 

I assume this is a used keg, if so, how did you clean the inside of it? I know that when I cut my keggle open it was nasty inside, it took a lot of elbow grease, repeated soaking and scrubbing to get rid of it all. I wouldn't want to have fermented in the keg I had. I'm now convinced that has something to do with why many of my hangovers in college were so bad

 

For the first cleaning I basically hosed out as much as I could, then did a 2 day PBW soak. After that I rinsed it out, put a couple gallons of water in there and put it on the burner for about an hour or so. After it cooled I rinsed again and visually inspected as much as I could with a flashlight. No issues with the couple of batches that fermented in there. Now that it's temp controlled and will be more frequently used (and now that I have a submersible pump) I think its time to build a keg washer. Honestly that is the worst part of fermenting in these is how much PBW it takes to clean it. Keg washer should solve that problem. Also cleaning it out right after racking the beer helps a lot too.

 

Well I added another 15 pounds of ice to the cooler and the fermenter got down to 57*F from 76* before shutting off the pump. I am really happy with these results and it doesn't seem like it will be a problem to maintain temps in the mid 60's especially if the wort is starting in that range. It looks like brewing lagers will be a possibility as well, although I would probably end up doing the lagering in kegs anyways.

Now I will just have to figure out how frequently I will have to switch out ice packets to maintain temps. Sounds like its time for an inaugural brew! :rockin:

 

How are those jackets holding up?