As many of you know, we are a very small brewery. Basically homebrewers that can sell our beer. We brew 10 gallon batches on a Top Tier stand with keggles. (upgrading soon to 1bbl) Fermenting in buckets in temp controled chest freezers.
well, over the past week, two of the freezers finally gave up the ghost. So, rather than try to get more, we’ve decided to build a little fermentation room inside the brewery. Planning about a 10X8 room, framed and insulated. We plan on using an airconditioner and space heater. As we generally have 8-10 buckets fermenting at one time, it’s not really feasible to tape a temp probe to the side of a bucket.
So, we will keep the room at 67 for all fermentation for all beers (no lagers of course)
Does anyone have first hand experience going this route?
Stop by Bluebird and I can show your our setup. Our air conditioner keeps the space at 40F (it struggles when it’s hot) so 67F shouldn’t be a problem. Although I would aim lower, like 64F to offset the heat generated by the fermentation, and pitch at 62F.
Here’s how I have my Fermentation Box set up. It’s 4Wx6Lx6H. The Temp Controller Probe rests next to the conical. The AC is 5000 btu rated. All I did is reposition the copper override sensor from the front (behind the filter) to the back so it never thought it was below 60F. You can sorta see it in one of the pics. Cheers!!!
The small fan above the AC moves the warm air out of the room.
How hot and humid does it get in the brewery? You can probably start without one but know it is there if you have problems. Doug at Malt and Vine went with a beefed up AC unit for his walk in after he blew out a smaller one, he might be using a coolbot too. Shoot him an email and ask, tell him I mentioned it. He has a bigger temp drop, but I think you want a bigger space he has.
I’ve never measured humidity, but even in the day or two that hits 80 over here, the brewery stays a cool 70-75. And our space will be 8X12, and 8 feet tall. Not all that big, we oprdered a 5,000 BTU air conditioner. The heater will be used more often than the cooler to keep it at the 64 you recommended.
Very cool, indeed. I’ve considered getting a coolbot to make a lagering room in my basement. Right now, I’ve got a nice little mini fridge “lagerator,” but I’d like to have the freedom to ferment multiple lagers at the same time.
We finished the fermenting room Saturday, and already have eight buckets in their fermenting away. And still have room for 16 more.
We can brew much more often, and it’s nice because we can see what’s in each bucket without having to lift it up.
The airconditioner is barely used, and this little heater we got keeps it very nice. We have the heater set to turn off at 65 degress, and the air conditioner to come on at 70.
And all for just over $1,000. We are very happy. There’s pictures at our facebook page, just search Dungeness Brewing.
It’s probably way over complicated but I have considered a zoned temp controlled area accomplished by putting ‘gates’ or dividers in at various points each with it’s own temp controller which would actually trigger a little servo to open or close a vent and/or turn on a ventilator fan.
So your zones would go from;
coldest=closest to cooling or farthest from heating
to
warmest=closest to heating or farthest from cooling.
Slap a fermometer on each bucket? That way you’ll know the temp of each one.
My concern is that 70 is high to turn the AC on, the beer could be much hotter. The heat of fermentation will take a long time to warm up a room that size, so the beer could be at 75 while the room is at 65. I would probably set the heater to click on at 62 and the AC at 65. Play with it though, and you’ll figure out a sweet spot.
Allow space between the new buckets to let heat dissipate, and you can cluster the older ones together since they won’t be as active.
There’s a small brewery in St. Pete that does just this. The cool room has two areas, one for lagers close to the A/C unit and another room closer to the “out” door for ales. They are separated by one of those clear, thick plastic curtains.
