Fermentation Chamber: Peltier or Not?

[Lynchy217]

Hi all,

I'm looking to build a fermentation chamber for 1 or 2 carboys, and my main concern is space, since my apartment doesn't have a lot of room, but with summer coming up, I know it's going to be hot enough to negatively impact the quality of my beer. I was looking into a few different options, and I was wondering about Peltier heaters.

I really like that they're capable of both heating and cooling and that the controller can take up a lot less space in the enclosure than other solutions I've seen, but I also know Peltier's are very inefficient. If I insulate the enclosure a lot, how significant is the difference in efficiency? If it is significant, what are my other options?

Additionally, how much insulation is reasonable, and what do people here use for insulation?

Thanks!

 

[day_trippr]

In this application, Peltier = Fail.
Don't waste your time...

Cheers!

 

[Sadu]

I tried doing a glycol chiller with peltiers. Managed to chill 1 litre of water by 1c below ambient with the peltier running hard and a big noisy fan. That was just chilling the reservoir, not even pumping through wort at this stage.
I couldn't see how this would be viable. That said those camping fridges work on peltiers and they do a good job of keeping a 6 pack very cold.

 

[day_trippr]

It's all about thermal load. Keeping an already cold six pack cold in a compact insulated box is one thing.
Scaling that up to shedding the heat of 10 gallons of wort in the throes of primary fermentation in likely a less ideally constructed chamber (wrt to that camp fridge) is another.

It's been tried. One can vector into the HBT archives starting with what's listed at the bottom of this page...

Cheers!

 

[NeoBrew]

I had tried various experiments to use a peltier setup for fermentation. The best version I had involved a copper coil wrapped around the carboy and a pump that circulated from a very small reservoir through a double peltier chip heat exchanger. I used an aluminum block exchanger made for computer cooling with a peltier on each side.

I was able to get it to run at about 10 degrees F below ambient temperature. Which was often enough to do ale fermentation. It actually worked pretty well for what it was. Eventually though I got tired of coming home and finding problems. This was mostly due to half-assed engineering on my part!

I went out and bought a chest freezer off of Craigslist for $50 and have not regretted it for a minute. I can now do lagers as well as cold crash down to 32F. The freezer also acts as a "containment" chamber for those inevitable explosive blow offs. You might find one small enough that it won't take up much more room than your homeade chamber.

I love messing around with DIY stuff. I learned a lot and enjoyed my cooler experiment. But if you want something reliable (and probably cheaper than buying all the peltier parts!) I would look elsewhere.

FYI, if you do plan on going forward with peltiers. One of my big learnings is that the efficiency of heat exchange from the chip to the heat sync or heat exchanger is critical. Buy some good quality thermal paste and read up on how to best install it. (Thin and even is the key.)

 

[NSMikeD]

I built one that will keep 2 2.5 kegs and a 3 gal fermentation bucket under 70° - but it's so inefficient the the peltier is really a back up to frozen water bottles.

A fridge was out of the question for me. What I discovered was that a well insulated box and a few frozen water bottles is a lot more effective that the peltier (a dual fan 10 amp unit that cost $30 w/o the dc power supply).

Without the ice bottles the unit has to run around the clock and at 10amps which is fine for the beer, but not of my electric bill.

With the ice bottles, I put new ice bottles in the morning before I leave for work - and they bring the ambient temp down below 60 quickly. On a cool day like today, the box has held cool and the pelters have not kicked on. On hot days, they will be running when I get home, but the box is under 70° which is good. I then swap the frozen bottles for the night.

A converted fridge would be my first choice, but that isn't an option in my apartment, so this solution works for me. A few frozen water bottles does the heavy cooling and the pelters give me piece of mind when the apartment heats up while I am out.

I have a small fan inside the unit to constantly circulate air. It's 6:30pm, my apt is 72° and the probe says the temp inside the box is 64°. That's from the ice bottles this morning.

The strip on the fermentor indicates that my beer holds steady about 65° since using this unit.

here is my thread which needs updating.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=627977

 

[flhb]

Have been happy with my "Son of a Fermentation Chiller" inspired chiller. I too live in a small apartment and didn't have room for an additional fridge/freezer and didn't want to add any more heavy things for when I inevitably moved to a new apartment. My chamber is less than 5 lbs, something like 2'x2' footprint, and is efficient and effective.

I took the normal SOFC plans that you have probably seen before (if not, a simple search will produce dozens of threads), and modified them so that the chamber had a smaller footprint by moving the ice chamber above the fermentation chamber. An STC-1000 and two computer fans later and it works darn well for my 3G glass carboys. Swap out the frozen 2 liter bottles before and after work during the height of fermentation (usually 2 days or so) and then once per day otherwise and it is great.