Wort chiller for fermentation cooling

[markag]

Has anyone ever used their wort chiller to cool their fermenter?

I'm looking at doing a westy 12 clone, and based on what I'm reading, I'm going to need to control my fermentation temps. I'm looking at getting a temp controller and using an aquarium heater for the heat side but am struggling a bit with the cooling side of things.

The idea I had was to put my wort chiller in a cooler full of ice water, and then use a small fountain pump to circulate water through the wort chill and reintroduce into the water bath. The temp controller would turn the pump on and off to hold temperature.

Has anyone tried this method? Do you think it would work?

 

[ncbrewer]

I haven't tried it, but I'll bet it would work great. Please post how it works out.

 

[thekraken]

I assume we're talking about an immersion chiller. I don't believe you want to do that if the IC is copper, but stainless could work. If I remember correctly copper is okay for wort but bad for beer.

I have seen a few conical fermenters that use stainless immersion coils, but they are dedicated to fermentation and fixed to the conical's lids.

I just did a quick google search on "conical fermenter coil" and found some examples, some were using copper. You might want to get some more opinions on using copper, I know I heard somewhere that it's bad for you/beer after fermentation. But I could have heard wrong.

 

[zipster222]

I like the idea. I would use the cheapest inkbird temp controller to control a garden hose solenoid valve (eg, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007R9U9BM/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20). If your tap water is cool enough you should be able to keep fairly low fermentation temps without wasting to much tap water.

I am not knowledgeable enough though to comment on the copper versus stainless steel issue.

 

[Mackster]

If I understand your idea...
The pump will add ice water to the water bath in which the fermenter is sitting?
You will have pump on the bottom of the water bath that to the wort chiller in ice water, then back into the water bath. This sounds pretty feasible; provided you have an way to add plenty of ice each day. I would not try to do this in 90+ temps (garage in the summer), but if done inside your home it could work.
I would be sure to place the input from the chiller on the opposite side from the pump to ensure mixing.

 

[markag]

Just to clarify, I was planning on filling an igloo cooler with ice water, and setting my immersion wort chiller inside.

I would have a separate tote filled with water sitting next to the cooler that would have the carboy in it.

I would run the supply and return lines from the wort chiller into the container of water that the carboy is in, and use a fountain pump to pump water through the immersion chiller, and the return line would bring it to back to the fermenter water bath.

 

[markag]

Here is a quick diagram of what I'm looking to do.

 

[timdillon36]

Sounds like a solid plan to me.

 

[thekraken]

That'll work! But I'm afraid it looks like a bit of a pain.

 

[markag]

That'll work! But I'm afraid it looks like a bit of a pain.

I'm open to suggestions. The westy 12 clone recipe calls for about 2 months in secondary at 50 degrees. I also want to ramp my fermentation temp up over 7 days, and from what I've been read, in going to need to chill for the first couple of days to counteract the natural temp raise from the yeast.

In trying to come up with an extreme low budget way to get accurate temp with minimal maintenance. Mini fridge with temp controller would probably be the easiest, but I don't have one.

I figure I could circulate frozen water bottles in the cooler once or twice a day, and left the temperature controller to the bulk of the work.

 

[Singletrack]

I have not done this, but I see no reason it won't work. However, a frozen water bottle doesn't have a great impact on a water bath plus carboy. I would take the simple approach of adding frozen water bottles to the water bath directly. I have done that, and it worked fine. Your is more complicated, but more fun. Go for it.

 

[OleBrewing]

I would say if you have the room by a used cheap fridge and diy temp controller. I am for simple solutions.

I have done a lager once using frozen bottles and putting a garbage can over the carboy and bottles, then covering with a blanket. probably wont do that again.

 

[markag]

I saw an example on YouTube of someone putting ice packs in the water with the carboy, and then using an aquarium heater to fight against the ice packs to keep a constant temp. Maybe that would work too, I just thought would maybe cause the ice packs to have to be changed out more often.

 

[Singletrack]

I saw an example on YouTube of someone putting ice packs in the water with the carboy, and then using an aquarium heater to fight against the ice packs to keep a constant temp. Maybe that would work too, I just thought would maybe cause the ice packs to have to be changed out more often.

You're right, that seems goofy. You don't need to keep the water bath a constant temp. The beer temp is what matters, and you can't change that significantly with a small ice pack in the water bath. Add an ice pack, check temp in a couple hours, add more if needed, check temp in a couple hours, etc. Soon, you will have it dialed in. You may want to find a cheap fridge for a fermentation chamber, eventually. One year, I collected 3 free fridges. In the mean time, ice packs are okay.

 

[markag]

I tested out my concept last night. I wouldn't do it in the sink for real, but this was just a quick trial run. I was pulling the water temp in the carboy down about 1 degree F per minute.

 

[TallDan]

If you're doing this in two vessels where the water level will be the same (like your sinks shown), the chiller doesn't do anything for you. If your return hose is filled with water, you will have a siphon that will keep the water level the same in both vessels. Pumping water into the iced chamber with the hose attached to the pump will cause cold ice water to flow back into the fermentation chamber via the other hose.

You could do it pretty easily with two coolers. Connect their drains to each other for your return path and run the pump from the fermentation cooler to the ice cooler. When you pump warm water from the fermentation cooler to the ice cooler, cold water will flow through the drains from the ice cooler to the fermentation cooler.

 

[IslandLizard]

Automation is great! It should work.

In a pinch, drop pint/quart size frozen water bottles into that tub that holds your fermentor. 1, 2, 3 maybe more, 1-2 times day. I've been using a large igloo cooler filled with water (and a dash of bleach) that can hold 2 buckets.

 

[markag]

If you're doing this in two vessels where the water level will be the same (like your sinks shown), the chiller doesn't do anything for you. If your return hose is filled with water, you will have a siphon that will keep the water level the same in both vessels. Pumping water into the iced chamber with the hose attached to the pump will cause cold ice water to flow back into the fermentation chamber via the other hose.

You could do it pretty easily with two coolers. Connect their drains to each other for your return path and run the pump from the fermentation cooler to the ice cooler. When you pump warm water from the fermentation cooler to the ice cooler, cold water will flow through the drains from the ice cooler to the fermentation cooler.

The water from the carboy bath is actually getting pumped through the wort chiller and returned to the carboy bath at a lower temperature. The ice water is there just to suck the heat out of the wort chiller.

 

[markag]

Automation is great! It should work.

In a pinch, drop pint/quart size frozen water bottles into that tub that holds your fermentor. 1, 2, 3 maybe more, 1-2 times day. I've been using a large igloo cooler filled with water (and a dash of bleach) that can hold 2 buckets.

The whole reason for this setup was to avoid manually chasing the temperature around requiring constant attention.

I wanted something that I could just check on one or twice a day, and let it go.

Mini fridge would be easier, and probably the way I go long term, but for using stuff I already had on hand, this should work.

The temp controller and fountain pump were less than $25 new on Amazon. The outlet and other stuff I had already.

 

[TallDan]

The water from the carboy bath is actually getting pumped through the wort chiller and returned to the carboy bath at a lower temperature. The ice water is there just to suck the heat out of the wort chiller.

Yeah, but why not just pump the warm water over the ice to chill it and let cold water flow from the ice chamber to the fermentation chamber to replace it?

 

[ncbrewer]

I use the fermenter in a tub of water method, adding ice bottles as needed. It takes a lot of baby sitting. I would definitely use your proposed method if it was practical for me. I say go for it.

 

[IslandLizard]

The whole reason for this setup was to avoid manually chasing the temperature around requiring constant attention.

I wanted something that I could just check on one or twice a day, and let it go.

Mini fridge would be easier, and probably the way I go long term, but for using stuff I already had on hand, this should work.

The temp controller and fountain pump were less than $25 new on Amazon. The outlet and other stuff I had already.

Oh, I understand what your goal is, I wasn't trying to discount your idea at all. For that price it's hard to beat, I may want to build something similar, I'm all ears!

I feel that water jackets give a much better temp control than cold air does in a fridge or freezer, especially during the initial 1-5 days, where a lot of heat needs to be dissipated fast. It's a good alternative to dropping a chiller coil inside the fermentor, with all the issues that brings.

 

[markag]

Yep. I see what you are saying. That would work too.

 

[markag]

I was surprised that I was pulling as much heat out of the test water as I saw last night. I started with 100 degree water in the carboy, and the sink water was at about 96 degrees. With the temp probe in the carboy water, I was seeing 1 degree per minute of temp drop. I went from near 100 down to about 80 degrees in roughly 20 minutes.

I saw about a 10 degree temp differential from the water in the carboy to the water in the fermentation bath. I didn't let the system run long enough to see if they would eventually match. I might need to do some experimentation to see how long it takes to stabilize.

The only thing I'm curious about is if I can maintain and equalized temp during active fermentation when the wort is generating it's own heat.

 

[dzlater]

I've been thinking of trying this method, but haven't got around to it yet.
I got the idea here http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2013/01/23/improvised-fermentation-temperature-control/

 

[hedgie57]

Isn't this the same system SS Brewtech uses for its temp control?

 

[NeoBrew]

This is not dissimilar to how I started with my temp control experiments. Here is the thread on that experiment. From what I learned of that system, the most applicable advice I would give you is that having the open water bath for weeks on end leads to creepy crawlers getting in there and getting funky. If you can completely enclose the carboy and your water bath that might help with that.

After that thread I fermented for a while with a system that utilized the copper coil around the fermenter (as shown on page 4 of the thread) and built a peltier cooler to chill the water. It is similar technology to how high performance gaming computers use peltier chips to run cooled water. I never did document that setup. It did work and I brewed with it for probably about a year. It's chief virtue was that it was compact. It was a bit finicky though. I had to mess with it from time to time to keep it running. It never would have run at lager temps though. I could only get about 15 degrees below ambient.

So now I'll give you the advice that I used to hate when I was doing those experiments. After all that messing around I did, I went out and got an almost new small chest freezer on Craigslist for $50. It is so reliable, easy to clean, and keeps everything nicely enclosed. I don't regret going to that for a second.

I think your setup has merit for all of us DIY folks out there. If you get it working well I'd suggest that there will be a lot of people who would be interested in copying you.

 

[rdavidw]

Here is how I do it: Glycol Temp Control Set Up

 

[markag]

I've been thinking of trying this method, but haven't got around to it yet.
I got the idea here http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2013/01/23/improvised-fermentation-temperature-control/

That's EXACTLY how I was planning on doing it, down to the igloo cooler as my cold water source for the wort chiller. Only difference is I plan on using water with ice packs or frozen water bottles instead of snow, and I have a submersible pump rather than the pump he was using.