Thermoelectric glycol chiller

[Island_Dan]

I brew small 2.5 gallon batches of beer on a biweekly basis and thus far, have only brewed Ales with a fermentation temperature of about 72 degrees F. I recently purchased a SS Brewtech brew bucket mini and was elated when I heard that they were producing a small number of FTSs temperature control systems for this fermenter.
I have never had the space luxury of having a fermentation fridge and was not fond of the idea of the ice filled cooler to stabilize my temperatures. I also don't want to splurge on a professional glycol chiller. Luckily I use to be a performance computer hardware reviewer and had a prototype thermoelectric cooler sitting around that I though I may be able to adapt to chill glycol in a small cooler.

The unit is a coolit boreas that I was given to review and consist of 12 Peltiers, 4 water blocks and a large heat sink.

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I bought a 30A 12v power supply, an inkbird St-1000 and built a small controller box which I screwed the unit on to. Plumbed into a 3 gallon igloo cooler, it took me 20 minutes to drop temps from 69F to 50F and it cycles on and off every couple hours to keep my temps around 50. I hope to put the FTSs pump in the cooler and cycle the cold water to stabilize my fermentation temps and depending on efficiency, I hope to be able to lager in the fermenter. So far I can drop the temps in the cooler reservoir down to 40 degrees without any issue at all and hold it there.

Will keep you all updated when I brew next weekend on how well this works to hold my fermenter at a more efficient temperature.

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[WI_Wino]

Looks cool! (yep, pun intended).

I'm all for gadgets but how is a mini fridge hooked up to a temp controller not easier than this setup?

 

[Island_Dan]

I live in an apartment and lack the space for a second fridge dedicated to fermentation. If I do get a second fridge eventually, it will be a kegerator which I will double task for cold crashing and lagering at cold temps after fermentation. This setup allows me take care of both ale and lager fermentations with a much smaller footprint.

 

[WI_Wino]

I dunno, you should measure your current footprint vs small mini fridges. A 2.5 gallon batch doesn't need a big fridge.

 

[Island_Dan]

I will do that and get back to you. I got my fermenter in my main fridge cold crashing right now.

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[Vandulus]

I'm curious as to how efficient the Peltiers are and if you have any condensation problems. How is the noise level?

 

[dmcman73]

I dunno, you should measure your current footprint vs small mini fridges. A 2.5 gallon batch doesn't need a big fridge.

I agree, a small "dorm room" fridge would be more compact than three pieces on the floor (fermenter, cooler and the chiller itself along with all the hoses)

The only time you would probably save on space is if you were hooking up 2 or more conicals to the chiller.

Looks pretty sweet though, hope it chills as cool as it looks....

 

[Island_Dan]

I ended up buying a mini fridge and turning it into a kegerator. Plan to use it for my keg, cold crashing and lagering. The glycol cooler has been tasked with holding fermentation temps and I have a cream ale fermenting at 67 degrees right now in my garage despite the ambient temps getting up to 95 degrees outside.

The chiller cools the reservoir to 60 degrees and the FTSs then circulates the 60F water through the fermenter to chill it to 67. It doesn't cycle very often and has been working great since Sunday! Enough rambling.

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[JohnnyGunn]

Just curious to know what kind of minimum temps you can get with this setup. Would you be able to lager with it?

 

[Zibe]

Out of curiosity I've had a similar thought to this but could you get rid of the water reservoir entirely? Basically just have a small pump recirc water through the fts to the peltier cooler in a loop controlled by an stc reading the beer temp? The stc would shut off or turn on the pump and peltier at the same time.

 

[Island_Dan]

That is how it worked as a CPU cooler. The peltiers turned on an off to regulate the set temperatures whilst the pump ran consistently. In that system, I could get the glycol down below 0 with the CPU at idle. I haven't tried chilling the water in the reservoir below 50 degrees but will give this a try this weekend and let you know how low I can hold it. I really would need to insulate the tubing also to stop too much condensation from occurring at anything below the due point. I went with the reservoir to use as a heat sink basically so the system didn't use too much electricity but there is no reason why I couldn't hook the fts straight to the chiller itself in a closed loop system.

 

[NeoBrew]

I played around with peltiers for a while. I do 5 gallon batches and had a much smaller peltier unit I was working with. It was just two chips. I found it could only get me about a 10 degree delta from ambient.

You can definitely ditch the reservoir. It is helpful to have some kind of a storage tank in the loop to have a place for air bubbles to go and allow for expansion and contraction.

Island Dan, I would also suggest shortening up those tubes from the floor up to your fermenter. You are likely picking up a lot of heat in that length of hose. If not that than maybe insulate them?

 

[Zibe]

Cool good info we're looking at possibly downsizing the house some which could mean giving up the the ferm fridge so looking for low footprint ideas. I live in Texas so temp control is vital. I only do ales so a 20 degree drop is what I want, cold crash would be a bonus but not absolutely vital. I've been debating trying something like this with a closed loop or fermenting in something like this:

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And attaching peltier(s) to the sides.

 

[Zibe]

Other idea was to put the cold reservoir in the beer itself.
If I attached this to the lid of my bucket so it hung down into the wort:
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Then inserted this tiny submersible pump into it
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Which would run out the top through something like this
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And back down to the reservoir in a loop.

But I'm not real familiar with the capabilities of peltiers

 

[engineofgod]

I just us an old immersion chiller/heater if found on ebay, build a temp controller and hooked up a 12v pump. 1000w heater and 10000 btu chiller all in one package

 

[rdavidw]

Here is how I do it: My Glycol Temp Control Setup

I am using a 1/2 hp aquarium chiller. Has plenty of power to lager and cold crash two fermenters and I can set temps independently. I know you got your chiller for free but about how much do those go for?

 

[engineofgod]

Mine was about 75, but the ones with temp controller included are about 125. If I remember right it is 1/3hp which is cheap enough on electricity that I don't even notice it on my electric bill.

 

[cod3ck]

Here's mine. Old window A/C w/ a cheap submersible pump and inkbird temp controller. Definitely hacked, but cold crashing is a snap and the whole setup was under $200 [emoji482]

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[rdavidw]

Here's mine. Old window A/C w/ a cheap submersible pump and inkbird temp controller. Definitely hacked, but cold crashing is a snap and the whole setup was under $200 [emoji482]

Sweet! Nice bang for the buck. Any idea how much HP the AC unit has? Did you soder a copper coil to the AC unit that sits in the cooler? Did you have to reharge the AC unit?
Thanks!

 

[cod3ck]

This one was 18,000 BTU which is super overkill (check out SsBrewtech's GC for a baseline reference).

No solder or recharging. I'd actually probably discourage any type of recharging unless you know what you're doing. If your coil busts, just scour Craigslist for another AC. They're cheap and all over on there.

Here's the link I used for inspiration and reference:

http://byo.com/mead/item/1877-build-your-own-glycol-fermenter

By the way - make sure you have all of this well grounded and connected to a GFCI.

Cheers! [emoji482]

 

[engineofgod]

18kbtu is overkill for just cooling, but I bet it will make cold crashing super easy [emoji3]

 

[PeteNMA]

I just us an old immersion chiller/heater if found on ebay, build a temp controller and hooked up a 12v pump. 1000w heater and 10000 btu chiller all in one package

Any chance of a close up of that Haake information sticker?

 

[rdavidw]

Any chance of a close up of that Haake information sticker?

Also - how hard is it to clean and serialize? Do you run hot brewclean through the lines and let it soak overnight and then run SanStar through when you are cleaning your fermenter?

 

[engineofgod]

Here you go. It's is ancient... Made in West Germany. The Germans always did make good stuff.

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[engineofgod]

Rdavid,

It is sealed away from the must. I pour a 1/2 oz of starsan's in every so often to keep any baddies from growing

 

[PeteNMA]

Thanks. Looks like it's about 1000 BTU give or take. Are you able to crash cool with it? Are your fermenters in a conditioned space or not? I'm looking for something which will be able to crash cool one or two 7 gallon chronicals in a garage in north carolina

 

[engineofgod]

Yep, it has frozen the coolant before, hence the temp controller. My basement is 68, I don't know if it could do it in a SC garage. Fwiw... I have a 7 gallon conical.

 

[rdavidw]

Rdavid,

It is sealed away from the must. I pour a 1/2 oz of starsan's in every so often to keep any baddies from growing

Are you pumping the must directly from the conical into the chiller/heater or do you have a coil in the conical and water or water and glycol in the chiller line? Thanks

 

[engineofgod]

I have a coil in the conical with water and polypropylene glychol running through it out to the chiller. Pumping the must out directly through the chiller would be a sanitation nightmare. The nice thing is it only uses ~350 watts, generally less- equivalent to a couple of light bulbs and with the temp controller it doesn't run all the time. I basically dont worry about the electricty cost like i would with a full A/C unit conversion.

 

[rdavidw]

I have a coil in the conical with water and polypropylene glychol running through it out to the chiller. Pumping the must out directly through the chiller would be a sanitation nightmare. The nice thing is it only uses ~350 watts, generally less- equivalent to a couple of light bulbs and with the temp controller it doesn't run all the time. I basically dont worry about the electricty cost like i would with a full A/C unit conversion.

Nice setup! On your photo I could not tell if that was water or wort in the lines and I didn't see a temp prob in the conical thermowell. There is one on eBay now for $75. If I had seen that before I would have gone that way. Very slick.

 

[engineofgod]

I have a temp probe for the conical. I took it out for the picture, typically there is about 3 degrees difference between the coolant temp and the must.

 

[engineofgod]

Here is a pic if it cold crashing

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[rdavidw]

Here is a pic if it cold crashing

Looks sharp!

 

[cod3ck]

Here is a pic if it cold crashing

How are you crashing?! I don't see any coils sticking out of the top..? [emoji57]

 

[rdavidw]

How are you crashing?! I don't see any coils sticking out of the top..? [emoji57]

The coil can be mounted through the side.