Basement Brewing with Dehumidifier

[jaspence]

Is anyone out there brewing in their basement and using a dehumidifier in their brew room instead of a vent hood? I am looking at the Blichmann boil coils and moving from the garage to the basement. Looking forany feedback as to if dehumidifier is an option or is to much humidity generated during the boil.


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[kal]

No dehumidifier (outside of some giant room sized unit) can remove that amount of water per hour. In my case my electric brewery boils off 1.9 gallons/hour. That's a lot of water.

Kal

 

[duboman]

No dehumidifier (outside of some giant room sized unit) can remove that amount of water per hour. In my case my electric brewery boils off 1.9 gallons/hour.

Kal

Exactly! No dehumidifier is going to extract the amount of moisture that a vent hood would over the course of a brew day, get a hood!


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[Bobby_M]

It's true that a dehumidifier left sitting in the room isn't going to condense all that amount but I wonder what would happen if you added flex ducting from your boil kettle right into the intake of the dehumidifier so you'd be feeding it concentrated moisture.

 

[duboman]

It's true that a dehumidifier left sitting in the room isn't going to condense all that amount but I wonder what would happen if you added flex ducting from your boil kettle right into the intake of the dehumidifier so you'd be feeding it concentrated moisture.

Interesting thought but my concern would be the moisture exceeding ability and wreaking havoc on the electronics/circuits etc and shorting out.


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[Bobby_M]

A dehumidifier isn't really a sophisticated electronic machine. It makes a bunch of coils cold and blows room air over the cools where it condenses and drips down into a bucket. I'm all for venting instead. I'm just exploring the thought.

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

I brew in a basement and have a small basement dehumidifier. I have a vent hood also. I crank up the D/H and let it run full bore the whole brew day, and it keeps running well after - and that's with a vent. No way would I plan on relying only on the D/H.

As for the duct straight to it - you still reach a point where the coils cannot pull that much moisutre out of the air as quickly. No D/H is going to be able to take super moist air in one side and pump out dry air on the other. Over time, the D/H will dry the rest of the air, but by then the moisture has settled out on any other cool surface, and that's probably not so good for your walls, ceiling, floors, and anything else in your basement.

-Kevin

 

[dyqik]

You can make a rough estimate of how much heat the dehumidifier has to pull out of the air to condense the water. Since the latent heat of vaporization applies in both directions - boiling and condensing - to liquify all the water you are boiling off you need to lose at least as much heat out of the steam as you are adding to maintain a boil in your kettle.

Some heat will be lost on the way to the dehumidifier, but dehumidifiers aren't 100% efficient devices (there's a fridge type compressor to run), so it doesn't seem like it'll work...

 

[processhead]

Most dehumidifiers have their capacity rated in Pints per Day, moisture removal. Typical ratings range from 25-75 pints per day.

While no consumer-grade humidifier will keep up with the moisture boil off rate of a kettle, its not unreasonable for one to dry out a brewing area over the course of a couple of days following a brewing session.

I run a dehumidifier in my unfinished basement brewing area in the summer months just to keep the ambient Summertime humidity under control.

I don't have a hood or exhaust system and during the Summer I mash inside and boil outside to limit the humidity.

In the Fall, Winter, and Spring I both mash and boil indoors. Never have had any problems keeping the area dry and comfortable. No signs of rust, mold, or mildew or mustiness

 

[TNugent]

I am getting ready to do my first basement brew on Saturday and am worried that for now I have to choke down my exhaust hood thru a 4" vent to the outside instead of 6". It has been an unusually wet summer and I already have 2 dehumidifiers running in my basement nonstop pulling out at least 3 gallons of water a day for the last month.

 

[Shockerengr]

I split a dehumidifier to use in a glycol chiller system for my fermentors. it was a 45pint/day unit and with it split an in water I was able to calculate it's cooling capacity @ ~4500btu/hr

to put this in perspective, my 5500W heating element puts out around 18000btu/hr - most of which goes to creating steam. putting that back into water at the same rate it's being made means I would need about 4 of those dehumidifiers running.