DIY glycol chilled plastic conical fermenters

CornyKegs 728
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This is really an impressive build and the detail you have provided here and on your build site is top notch. This is my favorite of the current build threads right now.

I'm still trying to figure out one thing about your plumbing:
Say all valves are closed and none of the fermenters is receiving glycol and the main glycol line continues to circulate. What keeps glycol from entering the hot side return from the fermenters and circulating through the fermenter in reverse? I'm sure it is obvious, but I can't quite figure that one out.

I copied a photo from your website and placed an arrow at the spot I'm wondering about.

Another thing that someone else asked about was the use of individual pumps for each fermenter. If someone were to use a simple STC-1000 to turn pumps on and off, there would be no need for a solenoid valve...or would you just wind up with a siphon? Sometimes my razor sharp mind just does not comprehend.

return leg.jpg
 
Nevermind, I just read my post and my question made the answer quite obvious. The valves are closed so nothing can flow through in reverse. DOH!
 
limulus said:
Nevermind, I just read my post and my question made the answer quite obvious. The valves are closed so nothing can flow through in reverse. DOH!
Click to expand...

haha, yup. The quick disconnects mean you can also disconnect and fill one of the fermenters while the others are working.
 
limulus said:
Another thing that someone else asked about was the use of individual pumps for each fermenter. If someone were to use a simple STC-1000 to turn pumps on and off, there would be no need for a solenoid valve...or would you just wind up with a siphon? Sometimes my razor sharp mind just does not comprehend.
Click to expand...

I suppose you could do it with 4 STC-1000's, but at that point you're saving ~$80 on the cost of the BCS-460, which would be offset by the extra 3 pumps you'd need to buy. You'd also lose the ability to automate lagering schedules, graph temps over time, and a web interface.

You'd have to change up the plumbing too. There wouldn't be a need for the motorized ball valves, but that was ~$120 of the entire cost of the project. So, not a gigantic deal.

Also, if anyone plans on building one in the future, don't get solenoid valves. Make sure you get motorized ball valves. Solenoids have really small openings for flow. So, all you need is one small piece of ice circulating in the system to stop glycol flow to your fermenter. MBVs are $15 more, but worth it for the added safety. It's also handy to get the MBVs with position indicators on them so you can glance and see which fermenter is operating at any given time.
 
Been looking at the awesome diy and was searching specifically for the kinds of pumps necessary for pushing the glycol thru the system but didn't find that info...can you repost that info for those of us who are a bit more challenged in finding our arse from a whole in the ground....thanks
 
lcat45 said:
Been looking at the awesome diy and was searching specifically for the kinds of pumps necessary for pushing the glycol thru the system but didn't find that info...can you repost that info for those of us who are a bit more challenged in finding our arse from a whole in the ground....thanks
Click to expand...

Parts list is available here:
http://plasticconical.com/glycol-chiller

Any submersible pump around 1/6 HP will work fine. You can go above that, but it's unnecessary. I think I paid ~$40 for the pump I'm using.
 
packet said:
Well, it looks like it wasn't the glycol left in the lines causing the drop. The blonde was finished today. I replaced it with an oktoberfest lager and the same thing happened.

I think I found out what the problem is though. I think it's the 12V driver card having a bit of signal bleed from a neighboring channel. Seeing as there are 8 inputs and I'm only using 3 of them, I was able to move the one for ferm 2 a ways away from the others. It looks like ferm 2 has settled down now and should be good to go.
Click to expand...

Glad you fixed that channel. The chart looked very sloppy, but not sure about the actual temps, they may have been just fine though.

If you ever feel the urge to build another one, I'll be happy to take your prototype. :D
 
packet said:
I suppose you could do it with 4 STC-1000's, but at that point you're saving ~$80 on the cost of the BCS-460, which would be offset by the extra 3 pumps you'd need to buy. You'd also lose the ability to automate lagering schedules, graph temps over time, and a web interface.

You'd have to change up the plumbing too. There wouldn't be a need for the motorized ball valves, but that was ~$120 of the entire cost of the project. So, not a gigantic deal.

Also, if anyone plans on building one in the future, don't get solenoid valves. Make sure you get motorized ball valves. Solenoids have really small openings for flow. So, all you need is one small piece of ice circulating in the system to stop glycol flow to your fermenter. MBVs are $15 more, but worth it for the added safety. It's also handy to get the MBVs with position indicators on them so you can glance and see which fermenter is operating at any given time.
Click to expand...

I jumped on the thread late but have been reading through; awesome build. Do you have a blog or anything that lays out your process, cost, equipment, etc? Or should I just go slowly through the forum and pick it all out? You've got me sold!
 
carsonwarstler said:
I jumped on the thread late but have been reading through; awesome build. Do you have a blog or anything that lays out your process, cost, equipment, etc? Or should I just go slowly through the forum and pick it all out? You've got me sold!
Click to expand...

Right here:
http://plasticconical.com/

Haven't had time to finish the controller instructions yet, but everything else is there.
 
packet said:
Right here:
http://plasticconical.com/

Haven't had time to finish the controller instructions yet, but everything else is there.
Click to expand...

This is one of the best DIY projects on this forum. The detailed instructions and inside information on your blog are top notch!

Thank you for putting all this time into illustrating this build. :mug:
 
IslandLizard said:
This is one of the best DIY projects on this forum. The detailed instructions and inside information on your blog are top notch!

Thank you for putting all this time into illustrating this build. :mug:
Click to expand...

Glad to help. If you end up building one, let me know if you need clarification on any of the instructions.
 
carsonwarstler said:
What would you say this project cost you, total? I went thru all the parts but was having trouble trying to ballpark a number. Just curious how far my money will go if I start now.
Click to expand...

Probably around $2k-$2500. You could cut the price significantly by getting rid of the tri-clover fittings though.
 
You did an amazing job on this project and the website is very helpful too! Waiting for the final instructions on there for the controller. A suggestion would also be a price / parts list if you could on there.

Again great job.

Matt
 
Clawson said:
You did an amazing job on this project and the website is very helpful too! Waiting for the final instructions on there for the controller. A suggestion would also be a price / parts list if you could on there.

Again great job.

Matt
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it's useful. Between grad school and work I haven't had a ton of time to work on the website lately. I just finished the first part of the controller page though. Hopefully, I'll get some time to draw up wiring diagrams in the near future.
 
Great DIY and have a question about what you consider you max temp to be...reason I ask is I do some saisons and they require higher temps and am thinking of doing a separate tank with a heater for that purpose as I don't see anyway to incorporate a heater into this neat setup...probably wouldn't make sense anyway....your thoughts??
 
lcat45 said:
Great DIY and have a question about what you consider you max temp to be...reason I ask is I do some saisons and they require higher temps and am thinking of doing a separate tank with a heater for that purpose as I don't see anyway to incorporate a heater into this neat setup...probably wouldn't make sense anyway....your thoughts??
Click to expand...

You can set it as high as you want really. The only constraint at the moment is it won't go above ambient temp + however much heat the yeast puts out. There is a way to add a heater though. The controller I built actually has everything wired for a heater at the moment .

During the build out, I ran in to an issue that you couldn't associate more than 6 outputs with temp probes. So, I couldn't run a heater. I had posted a question about it on the ECC forum and they pointed out a workaround to get it working. It's not the most elegant solution as it involves changing various states to heat, but it should work.

I haven't gotten around to trying it out yet as it's the middle of summer and ambient temps haven't dropped that low, but it's in the long range plans for probably some time around December when work usually slows down and I get a break from grad school.
 
packet said:
You'd need at least 3 of them and 3 additional pumps to handle the chiller and 3 conicals. It'd work, but you'd end up spending more money than just building a BCS based controller. This way you also only have one interface to deal with for administrating the entire system.
Click to expand...

Trying to figure out why keeping everything else the same and swapping out the BCS for the BrewBit controllers would involve 3 more pumps...

The BrewBit controllers can each support 2 temp probes and 2 outputs (1 BrewBit = 2 conicals, other BrewBit = 1 conical and chiller resovior). -You'd need the "hack" for the 12v output board but the BrewBit guys already have that working. BrewBit controllers might avoid your power outage issues, too if they automatically start back up where they left off when the power comes back.

They're both controlled via cloud-based web interface so a single console to control multiple BrewBit units is easily doable.


-Just looking for intelligent cost trade offs. Are brass electrically controlled ball valves any cheaper? (Stainless doesn't seem strictly required for glycol.)



Adam
 
biertourist said:
Trying to figure out why keeping everything else the same and swapping out the BCS for the BrewBit controllers would involve 3 more pumps...

The BrewBit controllers can each support 2 temp probes and 2 outputs (1 BrewBit = 2 conicals, other BrewBit = 1 conical and chiller resovior). -You'd need the "hack" for the 12v output board but the BrewBit guys already have that working. BrewBit controllers might avoid your power outage issues, too if they automatically start back up where they left off when the power comes back.

They're both controlled via cloud-based web interface so a single console to control multiple BrewBit units is easily doable.


-Just looking for intelligent cost trade offs. Are brass electrically controlled ball valves any cheaper? (Stainless doesn't seem strictly required for glycol.)



Adam
Click to expand...

The ball valves themselves are $25 each + shipping. Switching from stainless doesn't really cut the price down.

For the brewbit part, Chilling a conical requires two outputs per conical. You need one output to turn on the pump and another output to activate the ball valve. If you redid the plumbing so each conical is only controlled by a single pump, you'd need 4 pumps total and would get rid of the ball valves. The end result would be a need for a total of 5 outputs (3 for the conicals and 2 for the glycol chiller). So, three brewbits.

If you didn't replumb the system, you'd still need to find a way to turn on the pump (with potentially multiple brewbits turning it on at the same time) and also to step down the 120v to 12v for the ball valves.
 
Any ideas on how taxing it would be on the system to chill the beer out of the BK and/or if it would be wise to upgrade the glycol tank a bit to not overtax the AC??? What's your take....thanks
 
lcat45 said:
Any ideas on how taxing it would be on the system to chill the beer out of the BK and/or if it would be wise to upgrade the glycol tank a bit to not overtax the AC??? What's your take....thanks
Click to expand...

You wouldn't want to go from boiling directly in to the conicals. That's a ton of heat to displace and I doubt the plastic is really made for boiling liquids.

That said, I was brewing an alt today. Ground water temps are in the low 70s at the moment. I used a counterflow chiller to cool the water to ~80-85 degrees directly in to the conical and then the glycol to cool it down to 55 for pitching. All told, it took an extra 5-10 minutes to cool the wort from 83.6 initially to 55 F. Opened the conical up, aerated, and then pitched the yeast. Pretty simple.
 
Thanks for the reply....I didn't think it would be wise either and have a counterflow that I will use to do same...thanks...oh by the way I'm not using an old ac unit but had a dehumidifier go bad with the sensor switch on the full bucket irreplaceable and am using it instead of an ac and in testing seems to work great
 
Is there any reason why you couldn't just place a bucket filled with your glycol solution and pump inside a mini fridge and then only control when the pump comes on and off?
 
mmmbeer said:
Is there any reason why you couldn't just place a bucket filled with your glycol solution and pump inside a mini fridge and then only control when the pump comes on and off?
Click to expand...

It's way less efficient as you have two cross a different medium cooling the air which then cools the liquid. It's better to skip the middle "step" the energy needs to move across.
 
mmmbeer said:
Is there any reason why you couldn't just place a bucket filled with your glycol solution and pump inside a mini fridge and then only control when the pump comes on and off?
Click to expand...

Air is a really terrible conductor and minifridges can't cool all that much. It'd take hours to cool a 10 gallon batch and you wouldn't be able to control more than one at a time. You'd be better off using that minifridge to directly cool the wort.

Also, the A/C unit I'm using cost me ~$110, which is about the same price as a cheap minifridge. You might as well just buy the A/C unit.

Edit: For comparison, a minifridge moves about 100 BTU/hr. The tiny window A/C I'm using moves 5,000 BTU/hr
 
packet said:
The ball valves themselves are $25 each + shipping. Switching from stainless doesn't really cut the price down.

For the brewbit part, Chilling a conical requires two outputs per conical. You need one output to turn on the pump and another output to activate the ball valve. If you redid the plumbing so each conical is only controlled by a single pump, you'd need 4 pumps total and would get rid of the ball valves. The end result would be a need for a total of 5 outputs (3 for the conicals and 2 for the glycol chiller). So, three brewbits.

If you didn't replumb the system, you'd still need to find a way to turn on the pump (with potentially multiple brewbits turning it on at the same time) and also to step down the 120v to 12v for the ball valves.
Click to expand...

Ah! I get it now; thanks! (I'm a bit slow sometimes.)


Adam
 
How much of a dilution are you making with the glycol and water? Is it 50:50 or less?
 
mmmbeer said:
How much of a dilution are you making with the glycol and water? Is it 50:50 or less?
Click to expand...

About 1/3 of the solution is glycol. Here's a chart you can use:

http://www.prochiller.com/reGlycolChart.html

Mix it up however you want depending on what temp you want to keep the solution. Keep in mind you need a ~20 Deg F buffer to keep it from freezing to the coils. So if you want the solution to be 30 degrees F, the glycol can't freeze any higher than 10 degrees F.
 
Could this system be done using three different pids for each fermenter? Does the pump constantly run?
 
ClaudiusB said:
Yes.
This is the way my system works, one temp controller per fermenter and one pump running 24/7.

Cheers,
CludiusB
Click to expand...

So your sump runs constantly? how much power does that draw each month (cost).. Couldnt you just wire the pump to turn on when ever one of the three valves open?
 
ClaudiusB said:
Yes.
This is the way my system works, one temp controller per fermenter and one pump running 24/7.

Cheers,
CludiusB
Click to expand...

Claudius,

Like most of your brewery, that chiller is a thing of beauty.
I thought you went out and bought a commercial chiller until I really dug into the pictures.

I built a much, much smaller chiller (with an HVAC friend, too) out of an old 1/2hp dehumidifier 7-8 years ago- we just removed the evaporator and replaced it with a small copper coil, recharged the system and inserted the whole copper coil into an igloo drink cooler and used that as a very small reservoir. (I was using it to pump antifreeze to my computer CPU and GPU so I could do extreme overclocks.) -Now I wish I still had the thing and could just put a much larger coil and reservoir on it and use it as a glycol chiller...

-I like your purpose-built system a LOT though.

Do you have a HomeBrewTalk thread that describes the process and design trade-offs and decisions? (The images are nice but the description that goes with it is what I find really gets me thinking.)


Commercial glycol chillers are SUUUCH a rip-off given the actual costs to build one. Even small 2 gallon chillers used will cost you $1000 if you find a "deal". (They were so much more available and cheaper when I lived in Ireland; everyone had a little old rusty chiller and with pubs closing constantly there was a steady supply if you knew the right people. Now I can't find one for under $1,000.)
-The converted airconditioners + picnic cooler are plenty cheap enough to build but I'm looking for something that looks and stores a bit more like a purpose-built unit. (Having said that I've got a 12,000 BTU upright air conditioner now that I'd consider converting if I could find a good HVAC guy in the greater Seattle area...


Adam
 
kickflip_mj said:
Could this system be done using three different pids for each fermenter? Does the pump constantly run?
Click to expand...

The problem with a PID is that it's going to frequently cycle the ball valves, which generally isn't a good idea.

No, the pump doesn't constantly run. It's only on when the A/C unit is on or one of the conicals needs to be chilled.
 
packet said:
The problem with a PID is that it's going to frequently cycle the ball valves, which generally isn't a good idea.

No, the pump doesn't constantly run. It's only on when the A/C unit is on or one of the conicals needs to be chilled.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the constant questions. Whats the difference between three pids and a BCS?
 
kickflip_mj said:
Sorry for the constant questions. Whats the difference between three pids and a BCS?
Click to expand...

PIDs are made to frequently cycle in order to not overshoot a set temperature. While this is great for heating elements, it's not so great for the lifespan of your pump and ball valves. Also, you'd need 4 PIDs since you'd need something to control the A/C and chances are that wouldn't work too well. You'd also need a way to have multiple PIDs control a single pump. In the end, the BCS is the same price and gives you a lot more options for fermentation schedules, remote access, etc.

If you want the PID style display, they're available for the BCS though.
 

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