About 18 months ago, my lay down temp control chamber gave up the ghost. I hated to drag another freezer in the basement, so i built a DIY window A/C glycol chiller. The chiller DIY went pretty smooth, and I’m surprised more people don’t do this. My plan was to use the anvil brewbucket and my stable of 6 gallon glass carboys, jacketed with blue pump discharge tubing, and control that way. After spending hours trying to fit pipe, 2 or 3 different ways, and blowing $100 or more on various fittings from the big box store, i couldn’t get this to work reliably. So, i picked up an SS 7 gallon unitank used, and after 5 years of saying I’d never do it, i had my first conical.
I love the conical, but it sure is a lot to break down, clean, store, rinse, sanitize, and reassemble for a 5 gallon batch. Also, my beer was just as good as before, but certainly not better. Reality is i don’t brew often enough to bother with dumping/saving yeast, so the conical is overkill.
Since i couldn’t reliably jacket the Anvil, looked into adding a coil. Turns out a Temptwister SS coil is not that crazy. Brewhardware did a great job installing into the lid of the anvil, ran some nice spike fittings and glycol line, and just like that, the droid was born. Like many NJ brewers, we are spoiled by having Brewhardware as a LHBS, but with capability to drill 2 holes, and bend teh TempTwister a bit, this is doable as DIY. The height of the TempTwister is a perfect fit for the anvil. I also taped an aquariam heating pad to 1 side, since i need a little boost in the winter to get over 64. Made my first batch 2 weeks ago, a Cold IPA, and it work flawlessly. Perfect control, cold crashed from 64 to 33 in about 2 hours, with ~1 psi CO2 on the headspace, and let it sit about 36 hours. Increased pressure to 2-3 psi, and racked my beer. Besides the 2 holes for the TempTwister coil, and teh Aquarium heater, this guy is stock. I’m pretty surprised, but i‘m running vinyl tubing from CO2 manifold to the stopper, and i didn’t appear to be leaking any CO2 up to 3 psi. I don’t have the guts to hold it more than 1 psi unattended overnight during cold crash.
Managed to upgrade my kettle to 25 gallons, and i only have 6-7 gallon fermenters, so I’ll be splitting several batches into the Anvil “Droid” and the SS 5 gallon Uni Conical over the next year. I’m going to be putting the clear beer into the uni, and pressure fermenting/spunding on that one, mixing all sorts of variables…hypothesis is that so long as i clean well and control temp, both kegs will probably be indistinguisable, but we’ll see. I’ll report back on results Here.
I love the conical, but it sure is a lot to break down, clean, store, rinse, sanitize, and reassemble for a 5 gallon batch. Also, my beer was just as good as before, but certainly not better. Reality is i don’t brew often enough to bother with dumping/saving yeast, so the conical is overkill.
Since i couldn’t reliably jacket the Anvil, looked into adding a coil. Turns out a Temptwister SS coil is not that crazy. Brewhardware did a great job installing into the lid of the anvil, ran some nice spike fittings and glycol line, and just like that, the droid was born. Like many NJ brewers, we are spoiled by having Brewhardware as a LHBS, but with capability to drill 2 holes, and bend teh TempTwister a bit, this is doable as DIY. The height of the TempTwister is a perfect fit for the anvil. I also taped an aquariam heating pad to 1 side, since i need a little boost in the winter to get over 64. Made my first batch 2 weeks ago, a Cold IPA, and it work flawlessly. Perfect control, cold crashed from 64 to 33 in about 2 hours, with ~1 psi CO2 on the headspace, and let it sit about 36 hours. Increased pressure to 2-3 psi, and racked my beer. Besides the 2 holes for the TempTwister coil, and teh Aquarium heater, this guy is stock. I’m pretty surprised, but i‘m running vinyl tubing from CO2 manifold to the stopper, and i didn’t appear to be leaking any CO2 up to 3 psi. I don’t have the guts to hold it more than 1 psi unattended overnight during cold crash.
Managed to upgrade my kettle to 25 gallons, and i only have 6-7 gallon fermenters, so I’ll be splitting several batches into the Anvil “Droid” and the SS 5 gallon Uni Conical over the next year. I’m going to be putting the clear beer into the uni, and pressure fermenting/spunding on that one, mixing all sorts of variables…hypothesis is that so long as i clean well and control temp, both kegs will probably be indistinguisable, but we’ll see. I’ll report back on results Here.
