Peltier Unit on a steel brew bucket

[drinkwd40]

I used to keep my brews in a cool area of the house with it's own A/C unit. Now we pay for electricity and our air is central, so there's no place in the house <70F. I have a stainless SS BrewBucket, and dropped around $300 for it, and really don't want to fork over much more. There's a drop-in peltier solution called BrewJacket which is really close to what I'm asking about. I love how it looks in our TV room next to the kegerator and I don't want to mess that up, so a glycol or pumped immersion solution is out of the question because it adds too much crap, plus I want to "set it and forget it."
What recs do you have for me?

I'm thinking of grabbing a peltier unit off ebay with a temp controller and making the cold side contact **directly** to the steel of the brew bucket (on the back so the aesthetics are the same), with a heatsink and fan on the warm side. Assuming my house stays 76F all the time, is this a viable idea? Is there one better that doesn't have all the extra bulk of SS's immersion FTS system or Cool Zone? Is there a cheaper ready-made solution than the BrewJacket for $300.

 

[Homercidal]

I would think that you could engineer a design that does what you want for less than $300. It might be a bit of work, but it sounds like you aren't opposed to spending a bit of time to save a bit of money.

A local brewery uses a glycol system that cools their fermentors with a folded-over tube, just like an electric heating element, but hollow and filled with glycol. Something similar could be done to drop in the top of the fermentor, with the Peltier sitting behind the fermentor. There is not rule that says it has to sit on top. (It's probably just easier that way.)

I am not sure how it would compare to mount the peltier directly to the side of a fermentor. You would lose a LOT of surface area that way. Would it work? Maybe.

I would look into a tube that drops down into the top, and runs down the side. You could situate it so the only part you see is the tubes running across the top and down teh back to the peltier unit.