Anyone have success crashing with just a water/glycol source

[USMChueston0311]

Has anyone successfully cold crashed their conical (spike cf15) with 10 gallon batch down to cold crash temps using just a water/glycol resevoir in a mini-fridge? I think that the heat transfer will warm the cooling source up to much after it passes through the beer continuously.

Has anyone had success doing this? By rotating cold buckets from a different fridge, adding ice packs, bottles ETC?
Have 2 weeks to figure out how to get cold crashing temps so that I can carbonate in keg...

 

[USMChueston0311]

man, post number 5 that no one has responded to on this forum. thats sweet!

 

[nebulous]

you should ask a mod to move this to "chillers & stir plates" there are a couple threads talking about similar things. this section is more about the hot side of electric brewing

 

[mongoose33]

I did a thread on this subject (though not a mini-fridge) last summer; it follows my journey through trying to use the freezer compartment on a normal-sized refrigerator for this.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/conical-cooling-conundrum-spike-cf10.650037/

[Someone else posted on HBT about using a mini-freezer; as I recall they laid it on its back, reoriented the compressor so in that configuration it would still be horizontal to the floor, and sealed the top with plexiglass. ]

In the end, I wasn't able to get that to perform well enough to crash down to my target, which was about 33 degrees. I ended up buying a Penguin chiller ($$$) which also hasn't produced what I'm looking for. Even with insulation the fermenter to cover all the protuberances which suck in heat from ambient, the best I could do was 38.5 degrees.

I have a few more things to try yet, but unless your mini-fridge has a LOT of cooling power, IMO it's unlikely to be able to crash well.

EDITED: fridge to freezer

 

[IslandLizard]

you should ask a mod to move this to "chillers & stir plates" there are a couple threads talking about similar things. this section is more about the hot side of electric brewing

Excellent suggestion. Done!

 

[IslandLizard]

I seriously doubt a mini fridge has enough umph to chill that much, that low.
One of my brew friends uses a mini fridge as his fermentation chamber, and has problems getting that under 38F with a 5 gallon brew bucket in it. That's a closed environment, your situation has thermal leaks everywhere.

[Someone else posted on HBT about using a mini-fridge; as I recall they laid it on its back, reoriented the compressor so in that configuration it would still be horizontal to the floor, and sealed the top with plexiglass. ]

Actually he used a small chest freezer, not a mini fridge.