DIY glycol chilled plastic conical fermenters
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FreddyMar3
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Any examplesyet on how guys are going about heating the reservoir instead of chilling it? As they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming...
You'd need a bunch of heat tape, a 10A relay board, some outlets, and an expansion board for the BCS.
Hook 3 outputs up to the 10A relay, the associated outputs on the relay to the outlets, and the outlets to the heat tape (which is wrapped around the conicals).
Now the problem comes when you want to use those outputs. You can't associate all the outputs with the temp probe. So, you have to do some hacks with the logic of the BCS. Here's what someone responded to me when I asked about it on the ECC forum:
"You can use logic within process/state exit conditions based on the other two temp probes. Using this, you could use a couple of states to toggle your chilling by setting temperature values as the exit conditions."
You could go low tech and hook up a separate temp controller to heat wraps for each fermenter, using the controls on the temp controller and bypassing entirely the BCS and glycol unit.
TD
TD
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The point is to bypass the internal thermostat. They're horribly inaccurate and you have to rip the A/C apart for this project anyways. Might as well splice three wires to bypass it and reduce the risk of a spoiled batch.
Couldn't you just use a submersible heater in the glycol reservoir to heat the glycol and circulate warm glycol. Should only need 1 output from the BCS and a relay. Unless I'm missing something, that should work. I don't have my build done yet but that was how I was going to do it. Thoughts.
You can do that, but you lose some flexibility. If ambient temp is say 55-60 and you're fermenting a lager in one conical and an ale in the other, you'll need both heating and cooling.
Also, at the end of fermentation, it's really nice to be able to cold crash in the conical, drop out the trub, and then keg. If you're heating the glycol, that's no longer possible.
FreddyMar3
Well-Known Member
I am building a single conical system so I think I am going to give the submersible heater a try.
FreddyMar3
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FreddyMar3
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.FreddyMar3
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Packet, missed this before I had posted the other heater. Looks like the aquarium heater is the way to go.
This got me thinking about temperature stratification. Temp stratifications isn't really an issue while the yeast are very active but towards the beginning and end of fermentation, I believe it could be a problem.
Right now my conical is set up so that the coil is very close to the bottom. This will work well in the winter because the heating action of the coil will cause a thermal current upwards. In the summer, however, when I am chilling, I am afraid that the cool wort around the coil will stratify towards the bottom. If my coil were up high in the conical, this would not be a problem.
Ideally the coil would be adjustable in someway. I suppose I could use a pipe cutter and cut off the upright arms of the coil so that I can position it up high in the conical in the warm months, then use some compression fittings to add in the cut off lengths of tube to extend it down in the winter months.
Has anyone else addressed these concerns? I've read the entire thread but that was a while ago so I'm sorry if this was already addressed.
The SS coil I use is like 9-10" tall and is mounted directly above the racking port. So, the bulk of the wort is relatively close to the coils. I've lagered, cold crashed, and stored beer in the conical at 38 deg F for another 3 weeks or so until I got around to kegging it without an issue.
FreddyMar3
Well-Known Member
I see, I might have ordered my coil a bit to wide (10")... I'd say it is only about 3 inches tall.
Seems to me that heating or cooling might induce convection currents in the fermenters, plus the yeast activity might cause things to move about.
That said, I have read in the YEAST book, that there is often a temperature differential, especially in the conical part of many fermenters, as much as 10 degrees. This may be less in these smaller fermenters than the big commercial ones.
TD
That said, I have read in the YEAST book, that there is often a temperature differential, especially in the conical part of many fermenters, as much as 10 degrees. This may be less in these smaller fermenters than the big commercial ones.
TD
Thanks all for the replies about your choice of heat but rather than a style that you would place into your glycol or water I guess I incorrectly assumed you would use something wrapped around the conical part in some fashion...maybe under some insulation and have the copper coil placed higher on you unit to be more efficient.....any ideas along this line of implementing some heat ....thanks again
That's what the heat wrap I spoke of previously is for. Wrap it around the conical and then the insulation around that.
I haven't hooked mine up yet, but it should work fine.
What are you guys using for heat wrap? The sheets of reptile heat like the term wrap or heat tape? I am planning this with a brewhemoth and can't use the sheets....considering heat tape but how do you bypass the built in thermostat?
My motorized ball valves arrived today. I bought a spare as suggested. What a long time it took, plus the post office nearly screwed it all up (long story).
I am fortunate enough to not require heating. I'm in FL, and only a couple nights per year usually does it drop into below freezing temps during the night for a couple hours. On rare occasions for longer than this. However, my man cave/ brew cave is temp controlled (to a degree) on its own zone in my home AC/Heating setup. That said, the doors are poorly insulated and its tough to keep the temps below 75 in the summer with the AC on. Ambient temp if the zone is disabled in usually in the low 80's in the summer. In the winter and spring it is perfect for ale fermentation however, with an occasional noonish AC usage. I don't imagine I will be wanting or needing heating ability, as most of the year I will be using this for fermenting, conditioning and lagering, well, lager beers.
Going to be ordering the rest of the parts hopefully very soon (est cost approx 2k, not counting what I've already bought, ANY of the PEX tubing, tools, fittings, or crimps, or the stand, being built by a friend at cost)
How many of you have already ordered the custom coils from Stainless Brewing? I am concerned I'm going to royally screw up the specs. Seems there are enough of us we could just tell them "we want the same way as packet for his plastic conical setup".
TD
I am fortunate enough to not require heating. I'm in FL, and only a couple nights per year usually does it drop into below freezing temps during the night for a couple hours. On rare occasions for longer than this. However, my man cave/ brew cave is temp controlled (to a degree) on its own zone in my home AC/Heating setup. That said, the doors are poorly insulated and its tough to keep the temps below 75 in the summer with the AC on. Ambient temp if the zone is disabled in usually in the low 80's in the summer. In the winter and spring it is perfect for ale fermentation however, with an occasional noonish AC usage. I don't imagine I will be wanting or needing heating ability, as most of the year I will be using this for fermenting, conditioning and lagering, well, lager beers.
Going to be ordering the rest of the parts hopefully very soon (est cost approx 2k, not counting what I've already bought, ANY of the PEX tubing, tools, fittings, or crimps, or the stand, being built by a friend at cost)
How many of you have already ordered the custom coils from Stainless Brewing? I am concerned I'm going to royally screw up the specs. Seems there are enough of us we could just tell them "we want the same way as packet for his plastic conical setup".
TD
I bought from Stainless Brewing and the product quality was great. The customer service was spot on as well
Packet - Great Stuff! I'm been following the thread for a while. Was wondering how large of a plastic conical FV do you think this would work for? Obviously, longer SS IC giving more surface area for larger FV, but possibly a larger reservoir, higher BTU A/C unit? Thoughts?
Googled a bit on this.
1 btu is the energy required to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree F. I'm making the assumption that the same holds true for cooling just in the opposite direction.
3 conicals at 15 gallons per conical means 45 gallons
Gallon of beer weighs ~8.3 lbs/gal so we have ~374 lbs of beer which means it would take 374 btus to lower the temp of the beer 1 degree F
The AC I'm using provides 5K Btus/hr
Let's say you wanted to take your brew from 70 degrees to 55 degrees so a delta T of 15
It would take 15 x 374 = 5610 btus to accomplish this so it seems the AC would be up to the task. It'll be interesting to see if that's the case in reality.
This would assume perfect insulation all around. Also, that's the effort to chill it over a pretty large delta. I'd imagine the effort then maintain at that temp would be far less and definitely a function of the quality of insulation all around.
I found a more accurate calc for the effective btu/hr of the chilling system using the flow of the pump and delta T at the cooler
GPM*500*H20 Delta T = BTU/H Note: The 500 constant assumes straight water (no glycol)
Where GPM is gallons per minute flow of the pump
H2O Delta T = (temp of liquid returning to cooler) - (temp of liquid leaving cooler)
I'm about two weeks away from having our system fully built (1/2 barrel HERMS ala electricbrewery.com and 3 15 gal chilled plastic conicals ala Packet). When it's up and running, I'll do some experiments and post back.
1 btu is the energy required to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree F. I'm making the assumption that the same holds true for cooling just in the opposite direction.
3 conicals at 15 gallons per conical means 45 gallons
Gallon of beer weighs ~8.3 lbs/gal so we have ~374 lbs of beer which means it would take 374 btus to lower the temp of the beer 1 degree F
The AC I'm using provides 5K Btus/hr
Let's say you wanted to take your brew from 70 degrees to 55 degrees so a delta T of 15
It would take 15 x 374 = 5610 btus to accomplish this so it seems the AC would be up to the task. It'll be interesting to see if that's the case in reality.
This would assume perfect insulation all around. Also, that's the effort to chill it over a pretty large delta. I'd imagine the effort then maintain at that temp would be far less and definitely a function of the quality of insulation all around.
I found a more accurate calc for the effective btu/hr of the chilling system using the flow of the pump and delta T at the cooler
GPM*500*H20 Delta T = BTU/H Note: The 500 constant assumes straight water (no glycol)
Where GPM is gallons per minute flow of the pump
H2O Delta T = (temp of liquid returning to cooler) - (temp of liquid leaving cooler)
I'm about two weeks away from having our system fully built (1/2 barrel HERMS ala electricbrewery.com and 3 15 gal chilled plastic conicals ala Packet). When it's up and running, I'll do some experiments and post back.
I'm still in limbo on my build. Slowly getting some parts, but the big expenditures are probably on hold til after New Years. The cart is being built supposedly.
Thanks for that BTU analysis. Helps to put things into perspective.
TD
Thanks for that BTU analysis. Helps to put things into perspective.
TD
I saw a video a while ago of someone using a 10k BTU A/C unit and a 50ft coil for a 10BBL fermenter at a craft brewery. If 10k BTU can chill 315 gallons of wort, I'm sure 5k will handle pretty much anything you need at home.
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