Cooling coils inside fermentor?

[levand]

I live in a small apartment, and space is at a premium. Unfortunately, I've also had several batches of beer turn out quite poorly due, most likely, to high fermentation temps. So it seems I need a cooler.

Unfortunately, the wife has vetoed getting an extra freezer or building any large boxy structure.

To save space, I've hatched a scheme of placing a copper coil inside my fermentation bucket. With a thermostat and aquarium pump, I can then circulate cold water directly in the wort to keep it at precisely the temperature I want with almost no loss of space.

There's obviously some challenges, but here's how I plan on tackling them:

1. Getting an airtight seal around the input/output pipes.

Some tight-fitting rubber grommets with a well-drilled hole should suffice.

2. Maintaining sanitation in all the extra nooks and crevices

The thing will come apart entirely - I can clean and soak all the individual components in StarSan for 30 minutes immediately before use. The risk of infection will be higher, but should still be well within the "acceptable" range.

3. Copper in the beer will make the beer taste like copper.

I don't know. Will it? I could probably find a stainless steel coil, if I tried. Or even rubber/plastic - I'd have to pump a lot more water through to make up for the poorer heat transfer, but it could still work.

4. Where to put the thermostat lead?

This is the biggest unknown. Taping it to the outside is likely to get a reading several degrees too high, but I could set the thermostat lower to compensate.

Or, I could put it inside, and run the wire through one of the grommets - should still be airtight, although it is an extra vector for infection. This would only work if the lead is safe to immerse in wort for extended periods of time.


Any other thoughts or advice? Has anyone tried this before? My other option is building a fermentation cooler cleverly disguised as some piece of useful furniture so I could keep it in the living room or bedroom, instead of a closet, but that sounds more difficult.

 

[Golddiggie]

Why not just use a cold/cool water batch (or swamp cooler setup) instead of over-thinking this? You can use something like a large plastic bin/tote to contain it all, and not worry about anything leaking into the fermenting beer.

OR, put the cooling coils OUTSIDE the fermenter in order to prevent any contamination risks. There's something like that in the DIY issue of BYO (I really need to get that one) where they use chilled glycol to cool fermenters. Get creative with space utilization and she won't even notice it. Build something for the cooling mechanism to stay within, that will support the fermenter assembly on top of it (go vertical) and you're not using any more space than you already do. Put it into a closet, and you should be golden.

Just my 10 cents worth...

BTW, I also live in a small (1 bedroom, ~525-550 sq. ft.) apartment. So I understand your situation. I'm looking into renting a storage unit for some of the things I really don't access/need very often. Of course, that's NONE of my brewing hardware/items... Find one that also has power in it, and you could setup some chest freezer fermentation chambers there. :rockin:

 

[burton178]

Have you thought of something like this:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF

Or even just the ol "fermenter half submerged in water in a storage container changing out frozen water bottles" routine?!

 

[Stevo2569]

Here you go brother. This is my swamp cooler hybrid. My keg fermentor wont fit in my chest freezer(1/2" shy) and I was not getting enough temp drop out of just the swamp cooler. So I took my old immersion chiller that I no longer use and wrapped it around the keg. Hooked up a pond pump to some ice/ferm chamber water bucket and recirculated. It's holding at 65'F. The next evolution is to flip it like a conical with tri clover clamp and ball valve on a stand with wheels. Then run bigger diameter, longer length copper around it, insulate it, and pump from a glycol tank in my other chest freezer.

 

[DaleP]

Is this close to what you were thinking? http://brewhemoth.com/immersion-chiller They work great.

 

[BigJim_inFLA]

I use an Igloo CUBE cooler. take off the top and make another with a hole for the airlock. I used some leftover 2" foam. Fermenter goes in the cooler, water goes in the cooler, ice packs go in the cooler. Change ice packs as needed.

Need better temp control? Buy another CUBE cooler. Cut a hole in the side 2" from the top. Into this cooler goes 2 gallons water, submersible pump, and as many ice packs as you can fit. Close the lid. Submersible pump gets connected to homemade temp controller. Pump outlet hose goes into cooler with fermenter. Cooler with fermenter goes on top of the other cooler. Temp probe goes into cooler with fermenter. Set the temp you want and just check your ice packs every other day or so. Oh, very important step I forgot, Cut a hole in the side of the fermenter's cooler as well, about 3" from the top, and JB weld a 3/4" PVC pipe fitting. Connect this fitting by tubing that runs into the cooler with pump. This way the top cooler won't overflow.