Is my keezer toast?

[ThreeDogsNE]

I have a keezer I made with an older chest freezer, which I was given as a gift. It's been in use here for a couple of years, now sitting in the kitchen. Yesterday I put four fresh 5 gallon Corney kegs in it, which is all it will hold. They were at room temperature, about 70*. 24 hours later they are 52*. I haven't seen the temperature move all evening. I'm using an Auber PID in manual mode as the external controller, set at 42*. That seems like awfully slow cooling for 20 gallons. Is it time for a repair?

 

[day_trippr]

Where do you have the probe for the controller? And is the compressor running constantly, or is it cycling?

Cheers!

 

[Tinga]

Does your auber have a delay setting for the compressor? If not the compressor might be dead.

Another question would be do you think the freezer's thermostat decided it was at the right temperature regardless of what your probe is reading?

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

There is a hump on the bottom of the right side. The probe hangs about halfway down in the airspace over the hump. I put a brewing thermometer down there for a while, and it pretty much agreed with the reading on the PID. I think it is running continuously, but I will need a time with the TV off (meaning, family gone to bed) and with the house more quiet before I can be sure. I set the freezer's thermostat to the coldest setting to avoid having it interfere. IIRC, the delay on the Auber is set to 120 seconds. There is some frost on the inside of the freezer at the front, presumably from having the lid open putting in and hooking up the kegs, and from the StarSan sprayed on the line connectors. I don't think I have an air leak at the lid.

I tried plugging the freezer straight into the wall rather than into the PID box, and in a couple of hours I did not see the temperature move. I plugged it back into the box overnight. This morning it read 47*, so it finally moved some. It seems to me that 36 hours to get to that point with 20 gallons of beer is mighty slow. Should I have the Freon charge evaluated? The system checked for leaks? Just be more patient? I'm not eager to buy a new freezer, which would mean rebuilding the collar.

 

[Tinga]

yeah sounds like your compressor blows. A delay of 120 seconds is too short. especially if you just had the probe measuring air temp. many people with the STC-1000 set their compressor delay to 10 minutes which is the max. I'm willing to bet if it would go longer than 10 minutes it would be set for even longer. Many people also put the probe in some water or insulated against the side of their fermenter or something with more thermal mass than the air. When it is just measuring the air temp everytime you open the freezer it will probably turn on because the air temp changes.

 

[day_trippr]

Unless the compressor is running constantly, I'm not surprised that 20 gallons of room temperature brew with the probe dangling in the air is taking so long to get down to temperature.

When I cold crash a mere ~5.25 gallons in a glass carboy in one of my brew fridges it take a couple of days to go from the ~65°F post-fermentation temperature down to the 34°F controller setting - and that's with the controller probe strapped to the middle of the carboy with a chunk of insulating foam over it and the differential set to 2°F.

You have four times that volume...

Cheers!

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

Follow-up: day_trippr had it right. The keezer finally reached target temperature sometime today while I was at work. It took from Saturday afternoon to sometime Tuesday to bring 20 gallons (or less, now!) down from 70 *to 42*F. Next time I want a keg cooled faster than that, I'll use a bag of ice water and a party tub!