To build a walk in cooler or not.

[Stymingersfink]

I am in the process of designing and building a new house which will be complete with a brewery in the basement. I have a small (4'6"x9'0") storage area off the brewery that I could turn into a walk-in beer cooler. I will be upping my game with this berewery and getting some conical fermenters. So my question is:
Is it better and more efficient to have an entire room that is refrigerated for the purposes of keeping the serving kegs cold as well as layering, Or is it better to use a keezer for serving and use a glycol chiller and coil in the fermenter for the fermentation process?

Any advice is appreciated. Here is a plan of the brewery so you can see the layout. The cooler is drawn with (4) 20 gallon conicals in it.

 

[Horseflesh]

I'd definitely do a walk-in, but I also like to cook and the space would be used for things other than beer too.

 

[Mismost]

Since it's your money....I say go for it!

 

[iijakii]

Walk in would be sweet, but you're going to want glycol for the fermenters either way. Think of the temperature differences. Walk in at serving temps, one beer fermenting at 65, the other a 55 lager. Maybe cold crashing one.

I vote go for a smaller walk in just for the kegs still.

 

[Horseflesh]

That is a good point. In a busy brewery you need several different temperatures all the time.

I don't know how you'd do it, but it would be nice to have a walk-in that had one large area at 40F (kegs and food) and several compartments for fermenters that could be at different temperatures, all driven from the same chiller. Or something.

 

[triethylborane]

homebrew cribz is going to be a thing, trust me. looks like a theater in lower left



An issue is compressor placement. top or side mounted, it needs space and there probably is code on this.

Efficiency in terms of energy expenditure? without seeing any data, its probably more efficient to have a chest freezer and cooling jackets, even at the scales involved here. Hmm, compressor would be running 208 or 230v so, dunno. Good thermodynamics problem.

 

[VaBrewer]

I'm currently building a walk-in now. I plan on building some compartments that I will have heat pads/wraps in and a fans all run off of inkbird controllers. The main room will be for Kegs and the taps will be through the wall. Dimensions are 9x7 (outer) 8x6 (inner).

How are you going to cool yours? Do you have a window to vent an AC, or are you going to vent into unfinished space in the basement?

 

[Stymingersfink]

Walk in at serving temps, one beer fermenting at 65, the other a 55 lager. Maybe cold crashing one.

That is my conundrum. I like Horseflesh's idea of compartmentalizing the space, although there are a lot of problems to solve to get that to work properly.

I'm currently building a walk-in now. I plan on building some compartments that I will have heat pads/wraps in and a fans all run off of inkbird controllers. The main room will be for Kegs and the taps will be through the wall. Dimensions are 9x7 (outer) 8x6 (inner). How are you going to cool yours? Do you have a window to vent an AC, or are you going to vent into unfinished space in the basement?

I will cool it with a mini-split controlled by a Coolbot controller. The exchanger will be mounted on the wall opposite the door and the compressor on a low roof outside. The house is entirely insulated concrete form construction so I need to move the heat outside. The walls are 2x6 top and bottom plates with staggered 2x4 studs to avoid thermal bridging and decouple it from the theater wall for sound isolation. I will fill the cavity with closed cell spray foam which will net me about r-34 in the walls. The floor will also be an insulated 2x6 cavity. How are you going to build your compartments?
I have thought about building compartments in this one and then using a fan to draw cold air in from the main room if I need to cool them and having a heat source like this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000079896/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

for heating. If the compartments themselves were well insulated, I think you could maintain just about any temp you wanted .

The fans and mat would have to be controlled by something like this

https://www.morebeer.com/products/r...niOaUFJS1ofyO5XsQF8Gbgu2ik7hYsYxoCbPIQAvD_BwE

So with that in mind and the reasonably small space, anyone have any ideas about how to compartmentalize it? The difficulty in making that system efficient may be the reason to just go glycol and build a keezer for serving.

 

[Stymingersfink]

If I build different temp zones, how many do you think I need? My brewing experience is limited in that I have pretty much always brewed the same styles due to the limitations of my current setup. I want this new space not to be the limiting factor in my process.

 

[harry_the_face]

The number of compartments really depends on how often you are brewing ad if you intend to do lagers. I would say 3-4. That would give you one for lagering, 1-2 for ales, and one for naturally carbonating.
If you intend to do some high abv or aged beers you want in the 4-5 range.

 

[VaBrewer]

I am using an LG AC unit controlled by a Coolbot. My walk-in is in my garage so I didn’t frame a floor. It also doesn’t hurt that I had previously epoxied the floor. I put 2 layers of 2” rigid foam directly on the floor with alternating seams and 3/4” plywood on top. My walls are also 2 layers of the foam board, sealed with spray foam, caulk and metal tape. I’m planning to make compartments with the rigid foam and having a heating pad for the fermenters to sit on and have a fan installed to pull in cold air when needed. These will be controlled by inkbirds. I have several different sized fermenters so I’m going to build 3-4 compartments. Some higher, some lower. My kegs are going to be high rack/low rack too.
Lighter beers and lagers low rack and stouts/porters high rack.

 

[Stymingersfink]

VaBrewer, sounds like a good setup.
Another question that I am going to have is how long can I make my serving lines? I started a thread about this in the bottling/kegging forum but figured I would throw it out here too. I want to serve from my cooler to my kitchen which will be a line length of around 40' will that work?

This question has been answered on my other post.

 

[Stymingersfink]

From the other post, I've figured out that I am going to require a Glycol chiller for my dispensing system. So I think what I will do is Separate the walk-in into 2 sections with the back one being refrigerated to around 38f. I will use that for serving and cold conditioning. The front will be twice as large and won't be refrigerated. I will use fermenters will chill coils in them and will use the glycol chiller to cool them to whatever temp is required. I will use heating pads if I need them warmer than ambient. I think this will be the most versatile setup.

 

[TexasWine]

On the question of how many compartments, I used to ferment in my keezer by just wrapping my fermenter with a heating pad and a sleeping bag. Held temps just fine, and I was able to serve cold beer.

If it were me, I probably wouldn't do a walk in because of the headache of building it. But, if I did have one, it'd be all the same temp (38-40F) and I would insulate and heat each fermenter with their own controller.

Heck, doing this you could even use a reservoir of room temp water on the outside of the walk in and pump it through the coils to keep the beer warm enough to ferment. Beats trying to maintain a glycol system!

 

[Stymingersfink]

I did a little redesign and split it into two rooms. One is about 5'x5' and will be cooled for serving and conditioning. The other it uncooled and unheated so should maintain about mid 60's for fermenting. I think I am going to end up having to go with a glycol power pack because I have a fairly long push on my distribution line and I am going to run glycol in it. Here is a picture of the new layout. This picture isn't quite up to date, the 2x2 bump out is gone so the cool room is square.

 

[Phischy]

I built an 8'x6.5' cold room. AC and coolbot controlled. 4.5' isn't much room to work in. Tape an area off on your floor and see what space you have.

I don't know where you're going to find an exterior door to split your room up as shown. Make sure you can find what you need prior to building your unit. Also, I used closed cell spray insulation and with all the cladding my walls are thicker than 6" for the r-34 rating.

I don't ferment in mine, but I have a cold water reservoir i use to chill 2 Conicals. They're in insulated room but the rooms arent chilled. One big issue is mold. After each fermentation I'm scrubbing down the walls with a bleach solution. Really sucks. Haven't had the same issue in my cold room but there's not as much free water or yeast farts going on.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

I built an 8'x6.5' cold room. AC and coolbot controlled. 4.5' isn't much room to work in. Tape an area off on your floor and see what space you have.

I don't know where you're going to find an exterior door to split your room up as shown. Make sure you can find what you need prior to building your unit. Also, I used closed cell spray insulation and with all the cladding my walls are thicker than 6" for the r-34 rating.

I don't ferment in mine, but I have a cold water reservoir i use to chill 2 Conicals. They're in insulated room but the rooms arent chilled. One big issue is mold. After each fermentation I'm scrubbing down the walls with a bleach solution. Really sucks. Haven't had the same issue in my cold room but there's not as much free water or yeast farts going on.

Phischy, if you don't mind, how many BTU's is that AC? I was way over the top with a coolbot in my 4x5x6 room. It's downstairs and I've forgotten its size, but it was probably enough to handle a full-size trailer, lol. This was for my cheese cave.

 

[z-bob]

My dad built something like this 40 years ago for hanging hogs in to cool down when we butchered them, and for smoking the hams, bacon, and sausages. A small *very* well insulated room (several inches of styrofoam plus 3.5 inches of fiberglass) in an outbuilding, with a small window air conditioner thru the wall and the thermostat bypassed. It would chill down to the low forties when it was hot outside.