I’ve got a plastic conical fermenter that is sitting next to my chest freezer. I rigged up a stainless steel immersion chiller to attach to the lid of the fermenter with the coils in the beer. I have been running water through the coils to control the fermentaion temperature from a bucket of water in the chest freezer. It works well for cooling down to about 58 degrees, but I can’t get much colder than that because the bucket of water warms up too fast and the chest freezer won’t cool it down fast enough. Can anyone give some advice as to how I can crash cool the beer?
If your conical is large, you will need a larger source of cold water. Try a rubbermaid tote full of ice water.
Use glycol instead of water and get your chest freezer down to around 20 degrees
Both good ideas. I can definitely get a bigger bucket in there, but I am still not sure it will cool fast enough with the discharge water going in. I would like to try the glycol solution, but it is also my long term beer storage fridge. I suppose I can move the beer out for a few days and get the freezer really cold so I can chill the fermenting beer.
I am surprised how long it takes for about 7 gallons of water to go from 54 degrees to 40 degrees in a chest freezer that is set for 33 degrees. It takes maybe 7 hours.
Is your fermenter insulated?
I run insulated plastic fermenters with SS coil inside (like yours) and glycol chiller set to 28F.
I can not go lower then 42F.
I have aluminum insulation (reflectix) around the fermenter and it stays in my 65 degree basement.
Thirsty Monk - Are you using a dedicated glycol chiller? That would definitely be the way to go because you have on demand cooling, I think I will try a much bigger reservoir to see if I can get it to drop a little lower next time. Maybe toss in some ice cubes.
Try adding couple frozen 1-2L PET bottles in your reservoir. You might have to switch out periodically but it would definitely help.
Great idea with the frozen bottles - if I am good at keeping up with changing them it should make a big difference.
Yes I have dedicated Glycol chiller now.
Before I had just the same size tank in walking cooler.
could you make a strong salt brine and use that as your chilling liquid? you should be able to get that down below freezing which I would think would make a big difference. I don’t know what it would do to the SS coil after time though.
I could also get some glycol in the solution too to bring the temp down, the problem is that I use the chest freezer for storing beer, yeast and hops too, so I can’t really afford to get below freezing.
Yes you could but issue is that salt brine is very aggressive. If you need to replace your pump every year, it is cheaper just to get glycol.
makes sense.
Glycol… So just get some antifreeze at autozone or walmart.
I would’nt do that. If you have a leak, it could kill you.
Don’t over look the obvious. I had a plastic conical that fit in a used upright freezer I got for a few bucks at a used appliance store.
Agreed, if anything buy rv antifreeze that is used for the water systems. It is made of propylene glycol vs ethylene glycol
One should be more careful about casually using the term glycol and be more specific.
Even with a conical plastic or stainless I’d never submerge the chiller coils but wrap them around the fermenter. So a leak from the SS and thereby an appreciable absorption through the plastic? I think one would see signs of a leak first.
Leos submerges his chiller coils inside the conical and gets great results. I wouldnt wrap a coil around the outside because youll get bad heat/cold transfer and have about 1/10th of the coil contact that you would otherwise.
I don’t doubt it.
Propylene glycol is food grade and can be found in foods as an additive. You wouldn’t necessarily want it to be in your beer, but if a little bit did get there, it wouldn’t be dangerous. Ethylene glycol has no place in the brewery - at least in a situation where it could come in contact with beer. It is dangerous to ingest. The term “anitfreeze” implies ethylene glycol, whereas the term “glycol” implies propylene glycol, at least in the context of a homebrew forum.
I have tested and retested my chilling coils connections and I would be confident adding glycol to the reservoir to bring the temperature down. I suppose I could move my bottle and yeast collection for a few days during the time when I would want to crash cool the beer so that the freezer could get the coolant in the mid-20’s.
My next question is how to get that damn lid to seal better. I have tried a couple of different kinds weatherstripping, but I can’t get it to work. I guess that is better off in a new thread.