Upright or chest freezer for lagering?

[eujamfh]

I am torn on what I would like to add next to my brew set-up. Currently I have a four tap keezer, built on a 14cu ftchest freezer (allows four on tap, three on carb with a 20lb co2 tank). I have an upright freezer that fits my 15g minibrew conical or one 6.5g carboy (not tall enough to stack and not deep enough to get two carboys). I have four 6.5 carboys so I can at any one time have 30Gs fermenting at one time (only done a couple times in preparation for parties/holidays etc). I have 16 corny kegs.

I have been brewing about a year AG and this year am going to tackle pilsner and lagers.

I am torn between a couple set-up options:
1. Purchase another 15g conical and a upright freezer to use solely for lagers. I would use the conical for primary, as well as to lager. Cost=$300 for conical, $300 for upright freezer, $80 for temp controller.
2. Purchase a chest freezer and do primary for lagers in carboys (lifting them in and out would be a pain), transfers them to a corny and lager them in a corny. Cost=$175 for chest freezer, $80 for temp controller.

Clearly the cost difference is large and that is a factor. The advantages to the conical is racking any trub prior to pitching and not having to lift carboys in and out. Advantage to chest set-up is cost.

Both will do the job…I do have a peristaltic pump so I could certainly configure a hose set up for $50 to pump wort into carboys in chest freezer and transfer out to corny, but it would be a less clean transfer since I would no doubt pull up some trub.

I am leaning toward the cheaper option but wanted to see if there was any major pros/cons I am missing since I have never lagered.

Any insight is always appreciated!

 

[patthebrewer]

I use a chest freezer, and temp control. Works well, and it was cheaper. Although I have a conical fermenter, I use converted sankey kegs, and corny kegs for fermenting lagers, IMHO, because they are tall and thin, make better use of a chest freezers dimesions, and are stainless. Not only that but you can pump beer out of them with co2, which eliminates the lifting issues (which is a REAL PAIN). A Stand up freezer would be able to fit your conical though, however, in my case the wife wouldn't authorize the use of our upright freezer for beer purposes As she prefers reaching in the upright as opposed to diving in the chest freezer.

 

[sammy33]

I like the second idea with the chest freezer. If you are filtering (or plan to filter) your lagers the transfer to a corny keg is just part of the progression.

I did see where someone had made a pulley lift with brewhaulers to get carboys in/out of a freezer. I will find the link and post it.

 

[sammy33]

Here it is:



and part 2

 

[eujamfh]

Pat - do you use an airlock on the corny to lager or just button it up and relieve pressure occasionally?

Sammy - My back thanks you...my chiropractor condemns you! That looks great and certainly easy to rig.

 

[sammy33]

My apologies to your chiropractor.

 

[patthebrewer]

Pat - do you use an airlock on the corny to lager or just button it up and relieve pressure occasionally?

Neither actually....I use a blow off. Just stretch silicon tubing over the threads on the gas post, and run into a growler of starsan. When it's done, I just replace the gas post and push with gas thru my ros filter into the finish (or lagering keg). Works like a charm Actually even though I've not done it yet I could use the same process to gang cornies together, for larger batches for instance.