I see a lot of glycol in service these days. Has there been any comparisons with refrigeration as far as energy use?
It would appear the most cost effective means of cooling your ferment vessel is a small (inexpensive) chest freezer.
I would not mess with antifreeze chilling devices. But that’s just me.
Low tech, high effect.
I certainly appreciate your point. For me it was an issue of tiring of lifting fermenters into and out of the chest freezer. And I was using a hoist, for what that is worth.
I may yet use my fermenters with one of my chest freezers, but I will likely pump the wort in and push the finished beer out with CO2.
I bought a Grainfather conical fermenter about six months ago and love it. I don’t have the glycol chiller like Denny, but I bought their cooling pump kit (about $89) and, with a few frozen pop bottles in a water cooler, the pump does a great job of keeping the beer at a stable temperature. The cooling pump won’t quite cool it enough for lagers, but I mostly brew ales anyway.
Yes, the lifting issue is something I deal with. If it’s only 5 gallons, not such a big deal. But my fermenter is 8 gallon capacity, so it takes more than one person to handle. My wife is a good sport, and helps when she can.
Glycol, yes, but many people simply pump cold water through them.
Cost effective in what sense?
So I built a chiller out of a 5K BTU air conditioner and it worked great. I was able to temp control and cold crash without effort. This is just a guess on my part but my electric bill didn’t really skyrocket when using chiller, at least it was barely noticeable but it was noticeable. Then came time for wine making this year and I used my chiller to keep the crushed grapes below 40f for a 2 week cold soak. My electric bill doubled!! Went from $75 to $168…ouch!!
It also discombobulated the chiller and now it doesn’t get below ale fermentation temps so its basically headed to the scrap pile.
I know this wasn’t a comparison to your question but it does show you how much it can cost to run the chiller under stressed conditions. I am fairly certain a small refrigerator would have a small footprint/impact on ones electric usage.
That’s in the zip code of the spirit of my question. Thanks HopDen!
If a glycol chiller has higher entry cost and higher operating cost, and a small refrigerator has less entry cost and less operating cost, that might influence a decision.
7 cu ft freezer, $189. Should last for years, with no worry about pumping anti-freeze through plumbing.
Pretty simple. That size will easily contain 10 gallons. If you ferment in corny kegs, 20 gallons.
We have three of them. A one time expense. The average brewer could get by with a single freezer.
^^^ That’s exactly how refrigeration works.
…but I can see your point: low entry cost and low operating cost (yrs of maintenance free operation).
Yes, low entry cost. And it’s a one time expense. And we should never need to add any freon. Much less anti-freeze or glycol. Or worry about the associated plumbing and pumps required.
But hey, we are always trying to save a few $$$.
It works for us. You might choose other options.
One other thought, though…I don’t run my refrigerant through the fermenter jacket year-round. I only need to run it when the ambient temperature in my garage is above 50 (about eight months out of the year +/- for lagers) and only when I am fermenting a beer below ambient. So, I don’t have a freezer running non-stop for fermenting when using the glycol jacket wrap. On the other hand, I have a warming wrap for the cold weather fermenting, so it may consume close to the same amount of electricity (though the insulated cooler bag) helps on both directions of temperature control…
This makes sense. This time of year, our freezers are not running at all. The set temps are 66, 58, and 56 degrees. My garage temp runs from 52 to 60 degrees right now. I could probably just ferment in the garage!