Conical Temperature Control

[truebe]

I've been slowly collecting pieces for my upgraded brewery and the decision I've struggled with the most is how to control the temperature of the conicals. I want to have 2x ~14 gal conicals with independent temperature control. Do I stick the conicals in refrigerators or set up a glycol cooling system?

Refrigerators

pros:

-This seems like the much cheaper option.

-I want the inside of the conical to be as easy to clean as possible with minimal connections and surface area. I get nervous enough about my cleaning practices for the immersion chiller that I'm about to stick into boiling wort. I can't imagine dealing with similar equipment that I stick into the fermenter.

cons:

-The conicals look so sleek and you're pretty much hiding them in a refrigerator. I've seen setups where they use glass door fridges that look nice, but the price for those fridge seem to put you in the realm of an inline cooling setup.

-The fridges would probably take up a little more space and make it a little less convenient to transfer, dry hop, work on, etc.

Glycol

Pros:

-Basically my brewery would look nicer. Have all my conicals out on display.

-Also I could use some of the glycol for other cooling issues I haven't addressed yet like cooling warm tap water down to fermentation temperatures or cooling long tap lines.

Cons:

-More expensive.

-I really don't want to deal with a coil in the fermenter or the extra connections.



I'm leaning towards fridges but interested in anyone's input.

 

[Drumminguy81]

I used to use fridges and went to glycol because I wanted it to look nicer and I just didn't have the room for multiple fridges. I also use my glycol to pre chill my ground water for chilling wort. Works great. Really the glycol isn't a lot more expensive if you build your own system with a cooler and window ac unit. The actual glycol was the most expensive part. I have a total of about $200 into my glycol setup. Works excellent. Stainlessbrewing makes some really nice coils for the fermenters any size you need for very reasonable prices.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Both concepts work fine. Find one that fits your budget and design ideas. I know an insulated commercial fridge with a temp controller works great and seems to cost less to run then my glycol unit. I use a cip ball and a sump pump on both and I clean them the same. One conical has coils and one doesn't, they both clean up without scrubbing or extended soaking.

 

[augiedoggy]

Well consider growth as well as electric costs.. I can control 4 conicals with my one chiller.... Asthetics were not my main concern when building my setup function was. With that said it was much cheaper to build and works very effectively. I use blue 1.5" discharge hose wrapped around my conical as a cooling jacket with an insulating jacket made of two layers of foil faced bubble wrap.. It works well (even for lagering) and my chiller doesnt run all that often plus I use my heat wraps as well for heating.
One of the advantages here is no fittings or coils to remove and clean in the conical...

 

[truebe]

You guys think you could fit discharge tubing under the vest of a chronical and circulate enough glycol? That seems like it would be a simple, clean looking cooling jacket.

 

[madscientist451]

I'm voting for upright freezers. Get them from the store, place them where they are needed, plug it in and your done. If you ever decide you want to take a break from brewing, you can use it as an actual freezer or sell it.

 

[augiedoggy]

You guys think you could fit discharge tubing under the vest of a chronical and circulate enough glycol? That seems like it would be a simple, clean looking cooling jacket.

Yes, because it stretches I think it would work fine with a decent strength pump to push the coolant

 

[augiedoggy]

I'm voting for upright freezers. Get them from the store, place them where they are needed, plug it in and your done. If you ever decide you want to take a break from brewing, you can use it as an actual freezer or sell it.

each freezer needs like 12a if I remember so you can only have so many on each circuit. You need an upright freezer that doesnt have the cooling coils built into the shelves as many do. Plus depending on how you plan to run temp probes and heat chord you may be drilling into the new fridge to run these things... Three conicals = 3 freezers all with their own compressors to run and a much bigger footprint .. all things to consider too.