Glycol Cooled Fermentors

[oakbarn]

I am thinking about buying some one barrel glycol chilled fermenters but have some questions.

1. What is temp of Glycol? I have thought of a less expensive glycol chiller that I can make with existing hardware, but need to know "how" the process works.

2. I have a BCS 462 so I will use it to control the Glycol flow. I assume you just turn the pump on using Hyterisis Contol to maintain the temp.

I have seen some that have 2 zones for Gylcol. Any comments?

Is it worth the trouble at this size vs skin cooling?

I will have to build a room to house the fermentor if I go with just skin cooling to get the temp down enough for lagers.

Any info regarding gylcol chilling owuld be great,

 

[outside92129]

I made my own glycol chiller system and it works great. It's a bit bulky with the separate freezer unit but i don't think i'd change much. Having 12-15 gallons of wort to chill it can do it so quickly, i'm toying with the idea of losing the wort chiller and using this exclusively.

I tried skin cooling, ice, nothing worked for my batch sizes. A swamp cooler worked well before i scaled up but it's not as transportable as my lil'freezer and wheeled fermentor.

Q: what are you going to cool the glycol with? If you're going to use a fridge then you can get away with the warmer rated glycol, with my little dorm freezer i get ice crystals/slight slush using -50F RV fluid (freezer is 10F). The difference between the ratings is the ratio of water/glocol.

I'm using an STC-1000 variant, it's just an on/off for the pump controlled by a temp probe in the fermentor thermowell.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=483847

Q: Is there a specific chiller/fermentor you're looking at? For 5-10gal batches i don't think dual zones will do much.

 

[oakbarn]

I was going to use a small freezer as well. I am going to get a 40 gallon Fermentor. Right now I use a "cold room" that is controlled by a "cool bot". I can get the room down to 50 degrees F in the winter.

I was just thinking that if I got a "glycol cooled" fermentor instead of building the new room (and another AC) it might be better,


I use a DUDA DEISEL wort chiller and in the winter (Texas), I can pump wort as fast as I can and have fermentation temp. In the summer, I use a small freezer to chill water to 48 degrees but I have to throttle the wort as the pump for the chilling water does not produce the flow needed for full speed ahead.

We normally make 32 gallons.

 

[outside92129]

yowza, you make big batches. Looking at the descriptions of the large fermentors i think i can see why they offer a dual zone- the volume of the cone. All 3-4 versions i looked at last night had a zone for the cylinder portion, and a zone for the cone. I'm guessing that is because the cone has much less volume they don't want to hit it with the same cooling rate as the rest of the fermentor. I did a brewday at craft brewery and heard stories of wort freezing in certain parts of fermentors, not ideal!

Glycol fermentor vs new room: as cool as a new brew room would be (yes, that was intended : ), i think you'll have more cooling performance and flexibility with a glycol fermentor. Probably cheaper too.

pump considerations - i started with a small aquarium pump which could handle my required flow (barely- it was free) but once the coolant developed this weird stringy stuff and ice crystals the pump just jammed up. I bought a much bigger pond pump which just powers through it like a champ. As the link below suggests i'm using cheapo RV gylcol that wasn't designed for re-circulation, both in my fermentor and kegerator/faucet tower.

A few interesting bits here:
http://www.probrewer.com/library/refrigeration/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-glycol/

Btw, i went with polypropylene glycol (vs ethelyne glycol) even though it's virtually impossible for it to mix with anything i'll consume. But with lil'tikes at my house i went for something safer, and i've had to suck-start a prime and clear lines, and i wouldn't have done that with the green stuff.