Iceless fermentation chamber

[scoundrel]

Ok, so after deliberating for quite some time with my friend who's also a member of homebrewtalk (TKNice), we decided to come up with a concept for a fermentation chamber. We saw many great ideas but most, if not all, required using ice to control temperature or dedicate a refrigerator. We frankly didn't want to use ice and it seemed like a shame to dedicate a refrigerator to lagering when we could use it to store beer.

Both TKNice and I are tech nerds and have overclocked our PC's over the years and it dawned on us that we might be able to pull something off with PC watercooling. We went back and forth on the details and were convinced it would work. Then I started scouring the web for examples and were thrilled to find that Jas0429 had made his "Fermoire" with PC watercooling radiators. His Fermiore is absolutely beautiful. It uses ice to cool but his graphs were proof that the radiators would work.

Now for our concept. What makes our idea different is that the keezers we now use to keep our beer cold will supply the fermentation chamber with cool air. Additionally, we will mount a light bulb to warm the chamber. The benefit is that we can cool/warm the fermentation chamber without using ice and without giving up our keezer for storing beer. Additionally, it allows to build a modular fermentation chamber and potentially add more later.

For monitoring TKNice and I already own Homeseer. It's home automation software that we've used for years to control lights, monitor house temps, etc. You don't really need this software but it will allow us to write code to control fermentation schedules.

http://www.homeseer.com

The light and radiator fans will use 2 X-10 appliance modules. There pretty cheap.

http://www.x10.com/homepage.htm

For temperature monitoring, we are going to use the TX60 from weatherdirect. There's several advantages to using this. It has a probe that will fit in a thermowell to monitor the beer temp. It monitors ambient temperature, so we will mount it inside the chamber. Lastly, the temp info is available online. So we can grab this information and write scripts to trigger the radiator fan or lights.

http://www.weatherdirect.com/tx60

The chamber itself will be made of plywood and insulation like many of the other fermentation chamber examples in this forum.

The pump and radiators came from Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835108082
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835108098
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835108086

Here are some pics from sketchup. TKNice has already started building so I will post real pics soon.

 

[djsethall]

Simpsons did it. They used glycol in the freezer with a love controlled pump

 

[scoundrel]

Simpsons did it. They used glycol in the freezer with a love controlled pump

I saw that but I didn't want a tub of glycol in the freezer, so I went with a radiator instead.

 

[djsethall]

I saw that but I didn't want a tub of glycol in the freezer, so I went with a radiator instead.

Meh. Same concept, different design. I cant wait to see some pics. I really like the concept renderings

 

[VegasBrew]

Why not a computer fan hooked to a thermostat pumping cold air from the bottom of the freezer to the bottom of the fermentation chamber with a return pipe from the top of the ferment to the freezer? would not be as tech geek but it would work for pennies on the dollar.....

 

[broadbill]

I admire your ingenuity, but for the price of your pump and radiator setup you can buy a used fridge/freezer off of craigslist and run it with a Ranco/Johnson controller. That is essentially what you are building anyway. Short of answering the question "Can we do it?", I can't see why you would build when you can buy.

Also, this is alot of work just to build a chamber with a capacity of only one fermenter (at least that is what the Sketchup picture shows). I'd go much bigger. I've seen designs similar to this on this board and their main reason for building instead of buying was that the standard refrigerator/freezer did not have the capacity they wanted.

Yes, your design is modular. But adding more modules only doubles the price for relatively small gains in capacity.

Sorry to pee in your wheeties. I've toyed with the idea of building my own custom fermentation chamber may times before, but could never rationalize the cost of materials compared to the standard fridge/freezer + temp control setup (to say nothing of labor costs). Just my 0.02.

 

[scoundrel]

Sorry to pee in your wheeties.

No worries. TKNice and I were on the fence about posting since we knew the negative nancy's would come out of the woodwork and so far, based on the responses, that has rung true.

I admire your ingenuity

I appreciate that.

but for the price of your pump and radiator setup you can buy a used fridge/freezer off of craigslist and run it with a Ranco/Johnson controller. That is essentially what you are building anyway. Short of answering the question "Can we do it?", I can't see why you would build when you can buy.

I didn't want 4 refrigerators in my basement and Johnson contollers cost about as much as the pump. The design doesn't show it but adding an additional fermenter only requires another $45 radiator. The pump can handle roughly 4 fermentation chambers and I wouldn't add another radiator to the fridge unless its necessary.

Why not a computer fan hooked to a thermostat pumping cold air from the bottom of the freezer to the bottom of the fermentation chamber with a return pipe from the top of the ferment to the freezer? would not be as tech geek but it would work for pennies on the dollar.....

I see your point but for us the concept had more to do with an elegant approach as opposed to the cheapest solution. Like I said, we already had the home automation piece in place years ago and I have several appliance modules lying around. I also already have the weatherdirect thermostat. Plus that would work well for one fermentation chamber but we wanted to be scalable. Lastly, even though I didn't mention it, we can control them with Homeseer with an iPad, iPhone, PC, etc.

 

[tknice]

I admire your ingenuity, but for the price of your pump and radiator setup you can buy a used fridge/freezer off of craigslist and run it with a Ranco/Johnson controller. That is essentially what you are building anyway. Short of answering the question "Can we do it?", I can't see why you would build when you can buy.

Also, this is alot of work just to build a chamber with a capacity of only one fermenter (at least that is what the Sketchup picture shows). I'd go much bigger. I've seen designs similar to this on this board and their main reason for building instead of buying was that the standard refrigerator/freezer did not have the capacity they wanted.

Yes, your design is modular. But adding more modules only doubles the price for relatively small gains in capacity.

Sorry to pee in your wheeties. I've toyed with the idea of building my own custom fermentation chamber may times before, but could never rationalize the cost of materials compared to the standard fridge/freezer + temp control setup (to say nothing of labor costs). Just my 0.02.

Heya Broadbill, thanks for checking out our build. The huge difference between this design and others we have seen is the ability to have a scheduled fermentation that changes over a few weeks time (especially during the first week). We both already have multiple freezers with johnson controllers and, while pulling cold air out of a freezer can maintain a constant temp of say 68 degrees, it will not allow a fermentation to begin at 66 and slowly ramp up to 72 which we are excited to do for our beers and especially beers that we are cloning.

While it may not be the most affordable, it is the most controllable as far as we can see. Anyway, scoundrel posted this because there may be someone out there who can use parts of it as a guide.

-TK

 

[scoundrel]

TKNice got the ball rolling in a big way with 4 chambers! For those interested, here's a few pics.

 

[bnhocking]

TKNice got the ball rolling in a big way with 4 chambers! For those interested, here's a few pics.

Nice, I am thinking of doing this myself, only in a different way. Insulate the Fermentor and cool it directly using a loop off of my kegorator. Thanks for the pics.