You only need to take it down 5 to 10 degrees lower to ferment lagers.
I suppose I would have a chance in the winter. And I could help the Peltier along at first with ice bottles.
I didn’t have a great deal of success with the peltier coolers. They cool down real good but don’t maintain temps that well. To do it all again augmenting with frozen bottles would be a must.
Euge, how were you using them/n what application?
Right now I’m being too cheap to get a controller so I’m jus going to use a tape-on thermometer on the fermentor and set the temp of the cooler to hold at what I’m after. The cooler has a digital temp readout so I’m assuming it won’t be too far off whats going on in the fermentor, maybe 5F, with decent recirculation.
Peltier coolers are like anything else, they have to have good control to maintain temp. That said, they do suffer from their inability to cool any further when the hot side and cool side reach a maximum differential, which I think is around 60 degrees. A good heatsink and cooling fan on the hot side is a must.
Well mess with the current setup and see if it works for you. I pulled mine out of a coleman cooler and used it in two different applications- one with the ranco thermostat I have in my freezer right now.
The first time I swapped it into a igloo ice-cube cooler (blue) and it chilled into the low 50’s. I placed it into the insulated tote and it would cool into the mid 60’s with a lot of condensation and temp swings. But with some frozen bottles it worked well enough for fermenting ales. I wasn’t happy though and abandoned this approach. Bought a freezer.
I think you might have to build and place the appropriate TEC’s. There was a mention in Zymurgy with the ghetto chill 9000… I don’t think you’ll be lagering easily with the cooling unit.
Did you provide plenty of ventilation to the heatsink on the back if the device(s).
Euge, do you understand what I’m talking about doing? I’m not going to dissamble the wine chiller. I am going to put a gallon or so container in the little wine cooler, something that will take up most of the volume of the cooler’s interior. Then I intend to pump this chilled coolant using a fountain pump, through the internal chilling coil of the Brewhemoth.
I know the little wine cooler will maintain temp on white wine, I’ve had several bottles in it before. The question is whether it will keep up with a 5gal ferment, and I think it will at least while the basement is running around 63F. It’d be nice to be abel to cool the wort down to 50F and do lagers, although I have other means for that (keezer).
I can also use the keezer as my cooling source for the reservoir, I just had this other device and thought it would make things more portable. For that matter theres the small frig/freezer, I could put the coolant reservoir in the freezer. I bet that would keep up easily.
Use lots of insulation. That is a pretty inefficient cooling system.
Yes I will wrap the system with something if necessary. The one thing i have going for me in making the smaller batch in the larger fermentor, is that the empty space will act as a heat sink to some degree. The internal coil sits low in the fermentor so I think I’ll at least get full use of the system’s capability.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think it will be able to keep up. The heat transfer out of your 1-gallon jug into the surrounding air will be much less efficient because 1 - air is a poor conductor of heat, and 2 - it has a much lower surface to volume ratio than the coil in the beer.
I’m going to probably use a 2.5gal reservoir in the peltier-cooled wine chiller, one of those water jugs with the spigot looks like it should fit nicely. I installed the $25 Lowes fountain pump tonight and it looks like it will sustain a recirc rate of around 1/2gal/min. I don’t know if it will withstand some ethylene glycol or alcohol, my guess is no snce teh little pump sits in the liquid. I’ll put the cooler on a table (level with the fermentor) to reduce the head and maximize flow, I’m probably limited by the 1/4" ID cooling coil ID. Theres no telling what the system will do when the wine cooler is set to around 40F, but I’ll be finding out this weekend. I was thinking of doing no-chill with this setup (dumping the trub through the dump valve after cooling and prior to pitching yeast) but I’m not going to push it at first.
2.5 gallons will get you better capacity, but plastic is worse (because it is a better insulator, slowing the heat transfer from the air in the cooler). It may work for small temperature drops, but I really can’t see it chilling a batch of beer in a reasonable time. Try it though 
I’d do it with just water the first time and see what happens.
I suspect you’ll find slower is better. You might want to try throttling back to 1L/min and see how it goes.
Good point, I will give the reservoir material, shape and flow rate some more consideration. I suppose it doesn’t do any good to pull the cool out of the system right away if the chiller doesn’t promptly replenish it. If I do try no-chill I’ll let the temp get into double digits before I even try to chill.
The Brewhemoth site says the coil itself will get 25F lower than ambient. I don’t think it is going to be the weak link.
First brew is in the Big Unit, 6gal of black IPA. 1.068 OG and about 1:1 BU:GU. Used some midnight wheat and British chocolate right at the end of the mash. Bittered with Magnum to 50IBU, flavored with Centennial/Amarillo, aroma was Columbus. May dry hop, haven’t decided yet.
Edited to add: I decided to go big on this first batch so I’m breing another one of this recipe so it will be a 12gal batch. I already pitched extra yeast, will add the wort later today.
wow what a great score, you must be psyched! gratz man, use it in good health!
Yes I’m definitely appreciative and will put it to good use. It does require that I change my process somewhat to accomodate larger batches. I’ll still do my smaller batches too, but I think I will do my house brews in the Brewhemoth.
Today I brewed a second batch of black IPA to add to the fermentor just to do it justice, so I’ll have 12gal in the fermentor by then end of the evening.
I finished batch #2 and added it to the fermentor, this one came out a little stronger so the average OG is 1.072 and theres 11.5gal total. Checked the spunding valve this morning and it was at 5psi so we’re off to the races. I’ll take it to 7psi and ferment a few days at that pressure, then bring it up to 15psi. I’ll harvest yeast at some point then bring the pressure up to 30psi for carbonation. I’ll most likely use bottled CO2 for that.
The temp is at 64F as judged by a thermocouple taped to the cone of the fermentor. My recirculating chiller is set at 60F, it should keep up since the basement is pretty cool.
Lots of questions.
- Is 5 psi the normal natural CO2 production pressure caused by fermentation?
2. Are you artificially bringing the psi up to 7 and 15? If so, does that help with fermentation? If not is 15psi the max natural fermentation rate?
- You can carbonate in that fermentor? I thought you could only raise the psi for movement purposes?
very interesting stuff here