Another fermenter chiller question

[Islandboy85]

So I've seen many different ways and used few of them to cool my brews. The lazy bucket of water with the fermenter in is works ok, but I'd like to step up to something like the cool zone jacket or FTS immersion chiller for my ales. I'd love to try a lager, but I'm not Gina invest in a glycol chiller, and SWMBO will shoot down any other device like a cobbled together window AC unit chiller. So, I'm sticking with simple and portable. That's why I like the idea of the cool zone jacket. Can someone tell me on average how much ice they go through a day for a 10 gallon batch when I keep the house ambient temp around 75?

 

[jdauria]

I have the Cool Zone system from Gotta Brew. With a 5 gallon batch and using a 10 gallon igloo cooler for the ice/water, using 15 lbs of ice to start I usually got 2-3 days before having to add more ice.

After the first 3-4 brews though, I got sick of running out to buy ice all the time, so found a used mini-fridge and now use a bucket of water inside the fridge instead of ice. It works well, but once beer temp stabilizes after first few days of fermentation, since the water is no longer circulating, I get an issue of the water freezing because the fridge is so small.

If you try to lager with cool zone and a jacket, don't be surprised if you don't have to add ice at least daily.

 

[Islandboy85]

I've got ice machines at work, so I'm not worried about that much. Once again, portable and hideable trumps having to get ice in my situation. Thanks for your input!