I’m looking at some options to upgrade my brewing system to control fermentation temperature (besides the typical freezer/ref with thermostat). Would it be possible to add a stainless steel heat exchanger directly in the fermenting beer and pump chilled/ice water through it and have the pump controlled by a thermostat? Or is this a crazy idea? Thanks in advance.
That isn’t crazy but usually people wrap the chiller around the fermenter and then insulate over that. Then you don’t have to mess with cleaning the coils. Just the fermenter.
I’d also wrap the coils around the outside. You could put the fermenter and coils in a water bath to jacket the fermenter with proper temp water. I think there is a pimp my system post similar to this using a rubbermaid cooler and chiller. Actually, you probably don’t really need the coils. Just pump the cold water into the batch.
What a cool idea!
You can wrap the coils around the outside, but it will slow down the cooling time tremendously. If you bond them to the sides of the fermenter, IE solder, welding, etc, that will help, but you still lose the great heat exchange rate you can get with immersion.
pun intended, eh 
Has anybody have a picture of these setting? is interesting!
i agree however
i don’t think in this case he is talking about cooling wort, i think it is more about maintaining the cooled temp during ferment.
i think an immersion system would probably be fundamentally easier despite the cleaning issue just in terms of fabrication, flexibility etc.