The Fermoire

[Brewpastor]

Very cool. Great project. I assume the beer is even better! Thanks for sharing.

 

[jas0420]

I hope so Brewpastor. I'm changing a few things with my next batch... Going to try mixing up some "profiled" water w/ RO water + salts (have only used local tap so far and found bicarbonates to be off the charts) and also controlling my fermentation temps. My fingers are crossed hoping that it will make a noticable improvement.

DSean, the image labeled Brew Control is one that I threw together this weekend... It is still very rough around the edges, and only going to be of any use if you have a HA7Net 1-Wire to Ethernet converter (LINK) and Maxim/Dallas 1-Wire DS18B20 temperature sensors (LINK). That said, I'm happy to share it if you have that setup or plan on getting it.

If it is the graphs that you are more interested in, that's a completely different, stand-alone package, so it might be something that you could fit into your setup... It is a public domain application called Cacti (available free at www.cacti.net). I do still call the same temperature sensors from Cacti, through the HA7Net converter, but if you have the ability to poll some other type of sensor currently from your computer (and you have a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of patience to set it all up), Cacti is a very flexible monitoring application that can chart just about any set of numbers that your computer has access to.

Jason

 

[rabidgerbil]

DUDE...
you are my new heroe...
you and Yuri

 

[jas0420]

Haha... I'm flattered, but not I'm worthy of being mentioned in the same paragraph as Yuri.

 

[Grimsawyer]

Haha... I'm flattered, but not I'm worthy of being mentioned in the same paragraph as Yuri.

You are to wood what he is to metal... *shrug* seemed appropriate. BTW, kick @$$ Buffet. I'm jealous.

 

[jas0420]

I finally got to brew again this weekend! So far, the cabinet has done very well. I'm attempting to hold this batch at 68F. I pre-chilled the cabinet with about six 2-liter ice bottles (4 in the water, 2 in open air). That got the cooling water down around 40F. Once I was ready to put the carboy holding 5 gal (pre-chilled to 68F) of sweet pre-beer goodness into the chamber, I swapped out the 4 ice bottles that were in the water with fresh ones. That drove the temp down to 35F and left plenty of ice in the water. So it has been about 50 hours now, and the cooling water temp has risen from 35F to a little shy of 38F. From my previous tests, this curve will start accelerating, but I think I still have a few days left on this first batch of ice. That's pretty cool in my book!

The jury is still out on how best to monitor the carboy temp. I did circle around and make a pretty snug (and pretty big... like a 4-inch cube) insulation block to shelter that sensor from the chamber air. I think I've greatly reduced the influence of the air temp. The spikes on the carboy temp are only 1 to 2 degrees, (but still ugly) and they are changing so suddenly that I don't think it is the actual liquid... I think the glass around the sensor is cooling, and that is "leaking" in. I really didn't want to make a liquid-proof sensor for the carboy because of the contamination risk. I may just have to live with this for now. I've cranked up the temp polling to every 45 seconds, which is about as quickly as I can cycle through them all. So the fans aren't staying on very long... Usually just one polling cycle. The temp difference started out about 35 degrees between my cooling water temp and my target temp, so the chamber air where the carboy lives is getting a pretty good blast of cold air, and the carboy temp continues to drop a degree or two over the course of several minutes after the fans are spun down. I've pondered taking the temp delta into account and not leaving the fans on for an entire polling cycle if it was very great, but a degree or so is within the range of this particular yeast and it is still way better than what I had previously been fermenting with (see the red line for that!)... So I may just leave well enough alone for now.

All in all though, it's pretty cool to actually see it working!!

-jas

 

[KwaiLo]

The spikes sound more like sensitivity problems with the thermometer than actual changes to the temp, either of the carboy or air.

 

[scoates]

Nice use of RRDTool (-:
I have my kegerator setup similarly: http://adnagaporp.caedmon.net:8000/kegerator/

I'll be controlling a fermenter chamber with my microcontroller, too... but I have a fridge.. nowhere near as nice as yours, but it's in my basement (-:

S

 

[jas0420]

Thanks, and likewise! I was pondering porting my website to the outside world like you've done.... Got an out of town trip coming up, so it'd be nice to see what's going on. I'll have to train the cat to do my ice swaps though in case I see a problem.

 

[jas0420]

Short of something drastic happening, this will probably be my last update on this project, but I wanted to give one last report.

I'm about to rack my first batch to a secondary and plan on brewing another 5g batch later today. I haven't bought the hardware to finish up my other two chambers yet, so the new batch is going to ride along with the first batch while it's in resting in its secondary. I'm going to go ahead and reload the ice chamber today, but at this point it is a pretty linear temp loss on my cooling water. If I extrapolate that line out, it looks like my first batch of ice was enough to have lasted me exactly one week! Granted, that's only with 5 gallons fermenting at 68F, but I'm very pleased regardless. I've still got plenty of room to throw in more ice, and even another 5g cooling water bucket if I want to split the load of the other two chambers. Since I'm going to be mixing an actively fermenting carboy with a secondary, I think I'm going to add one more temp sensor to measure air temp at the same spot where I'm measuring the carboy temp. Think I'll probably use that one as the trigger and try to maintain a few degrees below my target temp. Maybe wrap the secondary w/ insulation. This really isn't how I planned to use it... Each batch will be in its own chamber once I pony up for the rest of the hardware to finish them.

On the graph, I thought a couple of things were interesting. If you look at the carboy line from late Monday through a little past half of Tuesday, that corresponds to when fermentation was most active. The fan was on quite a bit, and krausen was high. Then the krausen fell, and according to the charts it just lulled for a few days. If it is always that blatant of a change in the charts, I can let those tell me when active fermentation is complete instead of peeking in on it and letting my cold air slip out (an IR web cam in the chamber has crossed my mind too I have to admit... It's just not quite nerdy enough yet. ) I was a little perplexed by why it seems to have started picking back up on Friday. Perhaps it caught a second breath, but I THINK what is happening is that the cooling water temp has raised so much that the blast of air going to the ferm chamber isn't as signifigant as before and not having as big of an impact on lowering the actual chamber temp, so it basically isn't cooling as much and will start coming on more frequently.

So in summary, the liquid cooling has worked nicely in my experience. Don't know that there's any "need" to, but I would think this could be adapted to regular SOF Chillers. It would also let someone seperate to some degree their cooling mechanism from the chamber where they are fermenting or storing kegs that they serve from. I've seen pictures of dorm fridges and full sized fridges where they've attached them with duct work to the box they are fermenting in/serving from. An alternative to that might be to throw a bucket of glycol in the freezer, and pump your cold glycol to/from a radiator setup like this through insulated lines.

Anyway, it has been a fun project. I hope that you've found it interesting too!
Jason

 

[senorfartman]

80 degrees ambient in December? Yikes. I'm thinking a system like this in my house in Baltimore would work even better seeing as my original furnace likes to keep my house at a toasty 60 degrees in the winter time

 

[Kegerator]

That is Awesome!!!

 

[Pedro-]

The gears are turning.....


I hadn't even thought of a corner structure before. That alone is groundbreaking in my mind! And the coolant lines? My previous ideas for fermenchambers have now flipped 180... in a good way!

Bravo on the project, professional for sure!

 

[Loweface]

That's brilliant work... Have you had any trouble with condensation?

 

[Jared311]

That is just beautiful. (Tears forming in my eyes)

 

[jas0420]

Thank you all!

It has continued to work fine for me it went into "production" last year. I have to admit that I still haven't finished the top 2 chambers though. I've even got all of the pumps and radiators to do it already. Can't come up with another excuse aside from laziness.

RMCK, I get a little bit of condensation buildup inside both the ice chamber and the fermentation chamber. Never ever on the outside of the cabinet itself though. The way I raised the opening of the door off of the base of the chamber (there's about a 2-inch lip) and the fact that I used about 15 tubes of caulking in putting all of the foam togehter makes for a nice sealed area to contain any condensation or splashing when I swap ice. So I seldom mess with cleaning up the condensation.

The lip though is a mixed blessing. Since it's foam too, I've had to be relatively careful about loading/unloading the carboys from the chamber. If I had to come up with a gripe, it would be that it's a little tricky to get carboys in and out of the lower chamber. Evidently not tricky enough to make me get off my butt and finish the upper ones though.

 

[brewjunky]

If I through a jug of glycol in a freezer and pumped it through the radiator do you think it could cool a 7 CF enclosure that is properly insulated? to 45F

 

[HVBrewtality]

that is AMAZING! seriously insanely amazing!

 

[jas0420]

If I through a jug of glycol in a freezer and pumped it through the radiator do you think it could cool a 7 CF enclosure that is properly insulated? to 45F

In my unprofessional opinion, I would say: probably, but it might be pushing it a little. I've been able to get mine down into the mid 40's when I was first playing with it, but manually sutstaining it with ice water would have been a chore. I would suspect it would be a chore for the freezer to keep up too. It would ultimately come down to how fast your freezer could suck the heat out of your glycol holding tank, how big of a tank you could cram into the freezer, how much colder than 45 you can get the freezer down to, how much heat your fermentation is producing, and how well it is all insulated. You might consider a second radiator in the freezer to give the glycol some more cold surface area before it mixes back in with the main tank.... Might help slow down the warming of your tank if the freezer radiator is big enough.

Take all of that with a grain of salt though... I pretty much built mine without knowing what I was doing and just hoping that it would work. I know there are some folks on the board here who have the mental capacity and expertise to run through the calculations, so if you get a reply that seems like they know what they're talking about, I would take their word over mine!

I bought one of these "things" (still not 100% sure what it originally was) a month or two ago... Got it all taken apart and down to just a nice little compressor/condensor and cooling coil. I've kinda put it on the back burner for now, but I'm eventually going to find a way to add it to the Fermoire to at least assist with keeping things in the "ice chamber" cooler.... Either directly on the bucket o' cooling water, or maybe just air-cooling the chamber to help draw off the heat that the water brings back down into it. For $20, it was too hard to pass up. Since you're still in the what-if stage, you might see if something like that might fit into your plans!

Surplus Center Item Detail

Good luck!

that is AMAZING! seriously insanely amazing!

Many thanks BerserkerBrew!

 

[brewjunky]

In my unprofessional opinion, I would say: probably, but it might be pushing it a little. I've been able to get mine down into the mid 40's when I was first playing with it, but manually sutstaining it with ice water would have been a chore. I would suspect it would be a chore for the freezer to keep up too. It would ultimately come down to how fast your freezer could suck the heat out of your glycol holding tank, how big of a tank you could cram into the freezer, how much colder than 45 you can get the freezer down to, how much heat your fermentation is producing, and how well it is all insulated. You might consider a second radiator in the freezer to give the glycol some more cold surface area before it mixes back in with the main tank.... Might help slow down the warming of your tank if the freezer radiator is big enough.

Take all of that with a grain of salt though... I pretty much built mine without knowing what I was doing and just hoping that it would work. I know there are some folks on the board here who have the mental capacity and expertise to run through the calculations, so if you get a reply that seems like they know what they're talking about, I would take their word over mine!

I bought one of these "things" (still not 100% sure what it originally was) a month or two ago... Got it all taken apart and down to just a nice little compressor/condensor and cooling coil. I've kinda put it on the back burner for now, but I'm eventually going to find a way to add it to the Fermoire to at least assist with keeping things in the "ice chamber" cooler.... Either directly on the bucket o' cooling water, or maybe just air-cooling the chamber to help draw off the heat that the water brings back down into it. For $20, it was too hard to pass up. Since you're still in the what-if stage, you might see if something like that might fit into your plans!

Surplus Center Item Detail

Good luck!




Many thanks BerserkerBrew!

Well my freezer is way below 40 degrees. I think it would work the only issue would be whether the surface area would be enough to cool that large a compartment.

Since my wife wont let me use the freezer for a fermentation vessel I was think of building a collar and mounting the lid on the collar. Then drilling input and out put holes for the out put and return to the basin of glycol that would sit in a tub in the bottom of the freezer.

This way I'm using the freezer to cool my cabinet but she still can put all the food inside.

If well insulated I think it would work. The pump would be connected to a ranco controller as well as the fan so when need be the controller would kick the pump on and the fan to cool the area.

 

[brewjunky]

I have a few questions
-why so many temp sensors? Wouldn't 1 do?

-also will the 4 port 1 wire switch power the 120v pump

-do you need to know programming to use the interface

 

[ScarySouthernMan]

I must say that as an employee at a fine woodworking shop, a dabbler in electronics and a huge fan of brewing, that this may take the cake for the coolest DIY project to ever run across my screen. I can tell by your "I didn't really know if this thing was gonna work" mentality that we at least have a LITTLE bit in common. This thread is truly inspiring on a number of levels. You my friend have earned a dedicated follower of your posts. Job very well done. Keep the ideas flowing. People like me can and do really need this sort of reading.


Cheers friend,

- Jacob

 

[jas0420]

Sorry for the very delayed reply... Haven't had much time to do brew things this year. Sad.

Anyway, thanks Jacob I appreciate the comments!

Brewjunky, here are some answers to your questions:

-why so many temp sensors? Wouldn't 1 do?

Because I could. They were cheap, and the 1-Wire interface could handle it. I actually only went all-out on the first chamber... Crammed a lot of them in there at various locations so that I could see the effects on a graph, like intake air vs. output air on either side of the radiator. I used a couple in the ice chamber to compare the water / air temp relationship and see how they change over time. Yes though, one per chamber will suffice and that is what I wound up doing on the others.


-also will the 4 port 1 wire switch power the 120v pump

Yes, it has a built in relay. Several, actually. I use it to directly switch 120v for the pumps as well as 12v on the fans. I don't seem to have listed that part number back when I created this post, sorry about that. It is a "4-channel relay v3.2" from www.hobby-boards.com I went looking for a link on their site, but was unable to find that part any more. Found this description of it though... LINK. Maybe they have created a newer model now.



-do you need to know programming to use the interface

For the 1-wire stuff, yeah pretty much. I used a HA7Net LINK Ethernet to 1-wire host adapter. It is a nice little box that has a built in web server that you can do some basic manual things on the 1-wire network but nothing automated. I went this route because I like to tinker, evidently had a lot of free time back then (I can't even remember what that was like) and love gadgets. There were many aspects of the fermoire that were overkill as a result. The same end results could have been achieved with something like a Ranco thermostat that most of us use to turn freezers into kegerators. (would need 120v fans, but that's easy enough to solve!). Or maybe a house thermostat and an external relay? Lots of ways to accomplish it, I just went the crazy way.

 

[jas0420]

Quick note that I had to change the link to all of the pictures. They are now here if you want to see anything in more detail:

The Fermoire Photo Gallery by Jason Smith at pbase.com

(Click on this link on the HBT ad page that comes up: >> Click Here To Proceed To Link Destination <<)