What pump are you using inside the fridge? Hey Karl!
Seems to do everything I need it to without too much complaint either. Ive also used an inkbird on kegerator and have it in a mason jar filled with water to slow down the cycling on/off of the deep freezer and it seems to still be in great shape as well. Thoughts? The AC unit I used is a 5k btu unit and it will cold crash 12-13 gallons down to serving temp in about an hour. One question I have is regarding the cooling fins. Things still seem to work just fine, but the water/glycol solution is getting a bit gross looking. Big thanks Metzen, and everyone else, for this. Quote from: shadk on December 27, 2020, 04:50:18 pm, Quote from: shadk on December 27, 2020, 05:35:23 pm, https://www.amazon.com/Summit-Appliance-ADA302RFZ-Undercounter-Refrigerator-Freezer/dp/B08RR661ZK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=built+in+undercounter+freezer+manual&qid=1612994270&s=hi&sr=1-3, Follow me on Instagram -- @BaseWerksBrewing. I havent noticed any rust issues at all. Guess how many times I moved it. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Ornate Brewing Co. is a homebrewing based outfit in Manhattan, KS specializing in intricately designed beers and never-ending equipment upgrades. Ive found used analog window units for $35 on Craigs List, and portable units from $100. Appreciate any help you can provide. Id love to help support your operations if I can! I reinforced it with a heavy layer of black duct tape to keep everything together and then installed the female end of the liquid quick disconnect. Air movement is needed. Thanks in advance. After removing the covers to reveal the guts of the AC unit, the temperature probe attached to the radiator on the front needed to be unhooked so that the other parts of the unit can be moved around more easily. I had a manual AC and never had to worry about settings or wiring. As nice as glycol would have been, ice water was working just fine, although it was a pain in the ass! Have a few questions about the glycol. This way, we can get the best of both worlds. Haven't had a chance to test yet as I'm on a business trip running long. Hey Gary! It really doesnt seem like its a powerful pump at all. Maybe someone else would have a better answer for you? But it did work very well. I definitely put a lot of work into, so Im happy to hear that youre getting some good use out of it! It needed to be sufficiently powerful, but even more important was that it needed to be an analog unit. Hey Matt,
BTW great build. You used food grade glycol (Im assuming the glycol didnt have rust inhibitors). Waiting. JavaScript is disabled. 
Posted on January 12, 2020 Hey Grant! I can see where a mini fridge would not provide a large enough negative thermal mass. Had a question about the aquarium pump setup you have recirculating the glycol/water in the cooler. Any updates? I found getting the evaporator into the cooler at the right height without bending the copper was the most challenging part of the build. Im not sure what size tubing youre using, but I went with 3/8 ID tubing, so thats the sized quick disconnects that I used. Did you leave it in? I have nothing to prove this theory, it just seemed like it would work best that way at the time. First I had to get another small hole cut in the side of the plywood housing so I could run the inkbird wires inside towards the AC unit and power cables. Good luck with your build!!! Register today and take advantage of membership benefits. Using a hole saw and then a jig saw fixed this problem fairly quickly. It wound up being 26 tall, 29 deep, and 41 long. All you need is some refrigeration knowledge, an EPA Section 608 license, and know how to braze. The condenser simply wasnt built to dissipate THAT much thermal energy. Does the fermenter temp match the temp of your glycol reservoir, therefore your ink itd gives an actual reading of the fermenter temp? Temp of glycol and water wont go below 82.5.
(You need to add a condensor fan if you plan on chilling a larger volume of glycol, there's too much thermal mass for the light duty condenser to dissipate). As usual for me, nothing ever goes easy. However, she definitely started to stabilize (you'll see the inkbird sitting at 47F with a target of 29F; fermenter is at 49.5F near the bottom and at 50.3F near the lid). Cheers to many tasty beers. I'll throw some pictures up to show the innards and the frame I welded to secure the bulkhead without cracking it (like also happened to the acrylic I tried previously). Do you think a mini fridge would achieve the same return. I see inkbird has an aquarium probe and a temp probe do you suspect one is better than the other or will the stainless temp probe survive the glycol bath the same (or differently) then the aquarium coated probe. As far as changing out the glycol, I havent replaced it yet, but it might be about time to think about doing so. Ive seen them plenty of times before in the past at Walmart as well as Target. I used Metzon's notion and set up the fridge as a 10gal tank, with two circuits (planning on adding a second vessel, likely 7gal). Thanks for sharing. Im afraid I wouldnt have had much of an answer for you if it continued to be stubborn. No idea how to even begin figuring out the math on this, so I'd put as much liquid volume in the freezer as could reasonably fit (gotta maintain some circulation space). The Stasis looks neat and has pumps and controllers already installed. Sneezles61. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. It doesnt hurt that it classes things up a bit!
Since we dont have to go super cold to maintain fermentation temps, we can use the super high heat capacity of water and create a happy medium of a mix of glycol and water. Hinged top on cooler side. It might be a bit overkill removing it, but it might help keep things a bit more sanitary in the long run. The trick to this part is to go extremely slowly bending small sections at a time. Haven't been able to brew since the last batch. It really doesnt seem to have any trouble keeping up with the heat in the garage and seems to be working quite well. Are you worried about temparature gradient inside of the fermenter?
First, I cut four sets of three holes in the top of the cooler lid.
The fridge I'm using is small at only 2.65 cf so you wouldn't be able to fit much more in it. Got a window ac in my workshed. Unfortunately, Im not quite sure the exact size of the pump for recirculating they glycol. Hey Marshall! On the fermenter, I also ran two short lengths of tubing connected to the male end of the liquid quick disconnect.
Are you looking to be able to control the fermentation then cold crash afterwards with one unit? How is it wired to turn on with the a/c unit? The 10 gal bath, set to 20*F, is capable of getting my uninsulated fermenter down to 42*F. This does tend to tax the glycol fridge, and it runs continuously even with a fan blowing on thr condenser. Unless you guessed ZERO guess again. Im not really worried about any gradients at all. I have a glycol reservoir in the back of my kegerator and it keeps ales at low 60s very nicely. Once I get the pump and tubing Ill decide on where drill the holes. I had to think for a minute to remember which wires youre talking about, but I believe I did just tie them back into the metal housing. To be 100% honest, Im not exactly sure.
Anyone use the freezer part of a fridge as a glycol chiller? No more draining water out of the cooler twice daily! I know that the duty cycle on this is prob much lower that when used as a standard window air conditioner, but does it add a lot of heat to your garage without outdoor venting?
I really dont think adding multiple pumps for different fermenters would pose any issues at all. To help prevent any splashing from making its way out of the cooler, I spray foamed the spot at the top of the cooler I had cut for the copper tubing entrance. Thanks again. I have an SS Brewtech unitank that the glycol is chilling and it came with a pump to be used for the temperature control. After 2 hours it had stalled at 54F when starting at 62F.
Finally got it running and it wont chill and cant figure out why. Matt, one more question, those 3 wires that were attached to the condenser, did you reattach them to to base of the unit for grounding purposes? I thought about the window ac diy build but Im not sure Id be happy with the look of it. Separate the cooling coils and submerge them in the glycol? Have you noticed any corrosion issues? That is valuable information that you shared tjthanks for your continued updates and look forward to your findings! nice job with your build just wanted to know what size pump did you use to pump the glycol through your feed lines?
I plan on using an itc308. Hi Ariel! My other thought was make a wide enough platform that I can put the CF5 and roll chiller under it and slide it out like a drawer if needed. Now that youve been running it for the better part of a year, have you run into any durability issues? My setup currently runs pretty infrequently and doesnt seem to have any issue at all keeping up with things. Build a 2x2 platform on some casters and maybe box it in with the condenser end open and some side vents to pull in air.
There is some shelf space left but I don't plan to use it. Yes I filled it with about 8 gallons last night for a test run.
Follow up- sucessfully hit 35*F and hit the beer with gelatin. Thanks! It gave me the kick in the pants to start mine. Im really not sure what it would take to crash multiple fermenters at the same time, but unless you get super crazy with it, I dont think youd have much problem at all. Glycol is a funny thing. Thanks for sharing your build details. It also helps hold things where theyre supposed to be just a bit better so that theres less risk of damaging the copper tubing. The common option of an ice bath in a cooler is too much of a hassle - replacing frozen bottles several times a day wasn't going to work for me. Id hate to give you bad advice so Ill definitely defer to the experts on the subject. Ive ran it a a couple times for a few minutes and gets ice cold. First things first was finding a suitable window AC unit.
I did find some reviews that te aquarium probe plastic was breaking down after a couple of years. Sean here again, my son and I just picked up our cooler and we are getting closer, and are super excited. I've got a batch that I'll be dry hopping tomorrow and then cold crashing Sunday. Im sorry if this is a simple answer I cant make my brain understand it for some reason. Im sure you could make a water tank, put in a fridge and control pumps and temps with Johnson controller But that would take some doing and money It definitely took me more time to go this route, but I learned a TON and I have the pride in knowing that I built everything myself. As you mentioned the look was off putting as was the foot print. I guess it really just depends on what the mini fridge is rated for. Im not very familiar with electronics and what different things are designed to do, so I decided to go analog just to keep things a bit easier for my brain. Hi Matt- Ive been looking all over for these kind of plans. Sure did. We need to slowly bend the copper tubing so that the cooling fins will fit into our cooler. Switched on the FTSs for the first time to start the crash chill today. Thanks for the kind comment! We finally have everything built and plugged in! Any thoughts on this? Im almost done with my build!
Very nice! Besides making room for the cooler to fit up close without having to bend the evaporator all that much. Im glad you enjoyed my article! I went the way of the converted window air conditioner and it works great. Nice carpentry. Im highly impressed and inspired by your build. Can send photos if needed as I took pictures the whole way thru. The stainless coil that runs down through the center of the fermenter is fairly deep reaching and I just let it do its thing. There is a black foam on the bottom and edge that is a PITA to peel off. Im glad you got some use out of my build write-up! The A/C units inkbird actually has a small power strip connected to it, so when the glycol solution rises to above the specified temperature, it actually powers the A/C unit as well as a small pump inside the cooler to keep the glycol recirculating over the cooling fins. I also installed a small aquarium pump inside the reservoir that will turn on and off with the AC unit to keep the glycol solution moving. I went with the regular temp probe, and so far it has been working out great. The cooler I used is an Igloo 54qt roller cooler. Cheers! Both the AC unit and aquarium pump are plugged into it so they both turn on and off at the same time. In any case, good luck with your build!! I made one and it worked surprisingly well. If you get it working, definitely let me know! A word on AC units for other folks who are using this design a digital unit is no more difficult than an analog unit to set up. Will be mostly be doing ales . So the coil in the cooler will be immersed water? Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Looks good! It may not display this or other websites correctly. I decided on a commercial food bin slightly bigger than the one I showed in the photos.
I always just did lagers in a controlled fridge, but I am a bit stuck in working out environmental control for my English ales, which are my love and my focus. I don't know how I missed this thread! Mini-firdge Stainless Glycol Reservoir, What Connector to Use? In case anyone is following- the first two hours of run time demonstrated a problem. If at all possible, Ive found that its best to try to keep the full cooling fin submerged. BruControl: Brewery control & automation software.
Theres no corrosion that I can see and it doesnt seem to have lost any of its accuracy. No problem at all. I figured that bending it so that it stood vertical would make it easier to keep things low in the glycol and chill a bit better. So far, so good! Figured it was good.
Easy question. Cheers! Ok. By Matt McRoberts. Yep. Cheers to Metzen for laying the ground work. This seems to be the happy spot for my setup so that the AC unit isnt running constantly trying to cool the solution and it stays cold enough to chill my fermenters easily.
Sounds like your conditions are similar Thanks. No more buying huge amounts of ice! For the actual glycol lines, I taped two liquid lines together so that I could insulate them together more easily. I dont use. Building my own DIY glycol chiller was easy as well as inexpensive, but the amount of information on the internet about how to build one is pretty lacking. Chilling great now! I noticed you bent yours so the evaporator was standing vertical instead of horizontal. I was thinking about bending mini fridge freezer into a container and trying that but Im not sure it would be enough to cold crash. Looking for something for my new CF5 unitank from Spike Brewing. I had a similar idea but not use glycol and to pump it through a heater core with a fan behind it to cool my fem chamber that I added to the small fridge.
Should I swap it to high fan? I'll keep this thread updated as I test my first brew and make observations.
i have a question for you: Im really not sure if a dorm fridge would work or not. I found a few build logs that other people had done, but I needed more info! Agree with transamguy, really happy to be coming to the thread, if only today. Now that everything has been fully put together and the glycol solution added to the reservoir, it was finally time to plug things in, set temps on the controller and let it do its thing!! Dont do what I did at first and order parts that were different sizes and incompatible because of it. Sorry to butt-in, but I can add some insight. Matt, thanks for the quick response,I really appreciate it.
Good make a glysol cooler out of this.
I dont think you would really hurt anything by leaving it on, but I would still try to peel as much off as possible. Also just curious what are the dimensions of your whole assembly? For my system, I shot for a 1:2 ratio of glycol to water. I didnt check it when I bought it. Not pretty, but I insulated the lines and fridge.
With the plywood housing fully put together, I decided it was probably a good idea to glue in some screens over the vents to help keep more of the garage crud out of the system. This gets me going.
What is a good email for you? I cant remember exactly where I got it from, but theyre pretty easy to find at a lot of different places.
Great write-up.
Where did you purchase your tubing quick disconnects? Thanks for the step by steps on this. The two inkbirds arent actually working together. If not needed I'm fine not spending the time on a $12 part. 3/8 Hose Barb Body https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=118169&catid=743 Unfortunately, I only have a few pictures of this process. I was considering this option, but looking to control two fermenters at 10gal each. Probably a little more than I wanted since food grade glycol is pretty expensive. I slowly started my own build this week. One inkbird has the temp probe going to the fermentor to determine when to turn on/off the pump and the second inkbird has the temp probe inside the cooler of glycol solution telling the A/C unit when to turn on and off. Here's some dumb math. The compressor got fairly warm in a short time sp that might be another benefit of less water/glycol. I have not purchased an A/C unit yet, and was thinking about getting a portable unit is that I could vent it through the duct that typically comes with these units. Yeah thats a good idea then no messing with wiring. Will it be an issue with the glycol if I leave it? For the black foam stuff, I dont think my ac unit had any on the actual cooling fins, so my advice might not be the best. I wonder if you put some frozen 2 liter bottles in the fridge to take up some space and help keep the temp down, if it would get cooler? While digital units can be used, theyre MUCH more labor intensive and expensive to make work. Nevermind my last question. I wonder if it would end up turning on your fridge's compressor way more than it's designed for by constantly bringing in some heat into the freezer compartment? Great plans Matt. I didnt have to do a ton of bending just a couple tweaks and its sitting flush on bottom of cooler. The only way you can increase the cooling capacity would be increase the size of the (negative) thermal mass, and/or ditch the convective cooling of the glycol and work out a way to immerse the cooling coils from the fridge unit into the glycol itself. Matt, disregard my prior post! Hey Mike! Cool, thanks for the quick reply again, I have a picture I would like to share with you of our current build. Having a dedicated glycol temp controller and then separate temp controllers for my fermenters allows me to adjust everything independently depending on what stage my beer is at and also allows the glycol chiller to maintain a steady 25 degree temperature. Im sure it happens to small extent, but theres no way that I can really control it at all. any chance to test this yet? Im glad you were able to get some use out of the build thread and get a glycol unit of your own up and running. You could make your own extremely efficient glycol chiller out of a mini fridge, freezer, or a wall unit. Let me know what route you decide to go! Not only has the ice water solution finally gone away, but temp control is truly a set and forget affair. With my set up I would typically have 5.5 gal in the fermenter and I could see these Being at diffferent temps. It also helps to cut a small gateway for the chiller tubing to set into so the lid can close fully.
Was curious on the temp probe. If you give it a shot, definitely let me know how things work out! I'm searching for a larger container to use as a reservoir to fill the full width of the shelf it sits on. I'm a few degrees away from where I'd like to be. For controlling the temperature and turning on/off the AC unit, I decided to go with an Inkbird ITC-308. I have beer fermenting right now, but once this current batch is packaged up, Ill probably replace the glycol solution to keep things fresh. No more spilling water all over the garage floor!
Mike.
All of this is in a garage that stays around 80 degrees during the summer. Hoping this will do the trick and enable varied temp ranges down to cold crashing.
Does your set up struggle with cold crashing? Next, we need to disconnect the thermostat and trick it into thinking that it always needs to run. I messed with the knobs and settings and it kicked on for me. If you had a larger unit i'm sure you could. Category: Equipment Tags: DIY, Glycol Chiller.
Or is there a temp differential between your glycol reservoir and the fermenter? Thanks for the info. It will get better efficiency and less chance of freezing up the water in the solution and humidity in the air. The first one is on the glycol chiller so that I can control accurately what temperature the glycol solution is currently at. Yes-ish, I'm currently wet testing the "vessel." I use the refrigerators or my beer storage but then had an ah ha moment with unused freeezer. Nice work on your build. Thanks Matt. When Im just maintaining fermentation temps, it seems to run maybe 20% of the time. Looks really nice. I definitely wouldnt overload things by adding too many fermenters, but I would imagine it could handle 3 or 4 fermenters without any issues just as long as you arent trying to crash cool them all to serving temperatures at the same time. Lets put 3-4 gallons of glycol water in freezer then attach a pump. Not sure if that matters. Im dealing with very high energy bills here. Change). I dont have any experience with the aquarium version at all, but surely it would work just as well as the regular versions and maybe even a bit better? I'm transitioning from a fermentation chamber to a glycol cooling system using a converted mini fridge with a freezer compartment as a chill source. Its finally time to add the glycol/water solution and get things rolling! This should give me the low freezing point I want without killing my chilling ability. I found a 2 y.o. (LogOut/
As far as the housing goes, I opted for a plywood box with casters and handles to make it a bit easier to move things around. Thats great to hear that it started working for you! Thanks for the responses. Thank you so much for getting back to me, I really appreciate!! Thanks, So was looking for a solution and the idea of an IC or "attemperator" seemed a good one, just couldn't figure out how to do it. BUT, the higher the concentration of glycol, the lower the heat capacity.
Likes, dislikes, anything you would do differently? The AC unit seems to keep up with demand really pretty well and is usually fully recovered within about 30 minutes after reaching the target temp. Great article Matt! Before wiring I set temp to lowest and mode to high cool. When Im crashing down to serving temps its running probably 75% of the time but only over an hour to an hour and a half until it hits the target temp. Plus I travel for work and wouldn't be around enough to be able to manage it.
Complete with vent cutouts and a good black staining, it really made things look pretty nice! how accurate are the temps when reading from the fermenter? Can i put several pumps to recirculate in several fermentors with a STC 1000 for each fermentor?. Keeps the glycol cold for the long running.
Sounds like a brilliant idea. Thanks and greettings from Argentina. Other than getting a bit dusty from living in the garage, it still seems to be at 100%! Thanks for the great write up! The glycol will lower the freezing point of the solution and the water will keep the heat capacity sufficiently high so we can pull heat out of the fermenter. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Do you still get to use the rest of the fridge for something else? I did see that but I was thinking about simplifying things.
Might make it look decent. Thought about fabricating but I'll wait till I get a few runs in. I ran the probe through the top of the cooler with a wrap around the probe right into the glycol. And thinking. For years now, Ive been lusting over the commercial glycol chillers available through different companies such as SS Brewtech and Penguin, but could just never justify the huge amount of money they cost. Set the differential to 3*F so the pump kicks on at 38*F. This is pushing the limits of the system as the pump kicks on every 110 minutes or so and runs for about 12 minutes to get back to 35F, the fridge doesn't get much down time. While cold crashing beer in the heat of the summer, it wasnt uncommon for me to burn 100lbs of ice in a day trying to maintain temps. To Rehash the numbers- thats roughly 12 gallons of beer being chilled by 10gallons of glycol at 20F. is it possible to use ice maker for glycol fermenter? I dont have a great grasp on that subject and Id hate to give you bad advice.
Almost fully covering the coil. I've been on hiatus from homebrewing for almost like 2 years, what have I been missing? Yes, great work again. I've thought about this a bit, I have a minifridge that I straightened out the freezer portion and have thought of putting a reservoir around that.
I have more money in glycol than equipment,. Hey Ed! My fermentation room stays at 68 all year. (LogOut/ Thanks!!! Im think of putting a closed vessel with glycol mixture. No problem at all! Thanks for the quick reply.
Put some thick rubber under compressor and condenser section to help with vibration amd noise. Yeah the Stasis looks nice and is the cheapest of the glycol chillers but at $659 there is no way.
Seems to do everything I need it to without too much complaint either. Ive also used an inkbird on kegerator and have it in a mason jar filled with water to slow down the cycling on/off of the deep freezer and it seems to still be in great shape as well. Thoughts? The AC unit I used is a 5k btu unit and it will cold crash 12-13 gallons down to serving temp in about an hour. One question I have is regarding the cooling fins. Things still seem to work just fine, but the water/glycol solution is getting a bit gross looking. Big thanks Metzen, and everyone else, for this. Quote from: shadk on December 27, 2020, 04:50:18 pm, Quote from: shadk on December 27, 2020, 05:35:23 pm, https://www.amazon.com/Summit-Appliance-ADA302RFZ-Undercounter-Refrigerator-Freezer/dp/B08RR661ZK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=built+in+undercounter+freezer+manual&qid=1612994270&s=hi&sr=1-3, Follow me on Instagram -- @BaseWerksBrewing. I havent noticed any rust issues at all. Guess how many times I moved it. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Ornate Brewing Co. is a homebrewing based outfit in Manhattan, KS specializing in intricately designed beers and never-ending equipment upgrades. Ive found used analog window units for $35 on Craigs List, and portable units from $100. Appreciate any help you can provide. Id love to help support your operations if I can! I reinforced it with a heavy layer of black duct tape to keep everything together and then installed the female end of the liquid quick disconnect. Air movement is needed. Thanks in advance. After removing the covers to reveal the guts of the AC unit, the temperature probe attached to the radiator on the front needed to be unhooked so that the other parts of the unit can be moved around more easily. I had a manual AC and never had to worry about settings or wiring. As nice as glycol would have been, ice water was working just fine, although it was a pain in the ass! Have a few questions about the glycol. This way, we can get the best of both worlds. Haven't had a chance to test yet as I'm on a business trip running long. Hey Gary! It really doesnt seem like its a powerful pump at all. Maybe someone else would have a better answer for you? But it did work very well. I definitely put a lot of work into, so Im happy to hear that youre getting some good use out of it! It needed to be sufficiently powerful, but even more important was that it needed to be an analog unit. Hey Matt,
BTW great build. You used food grade glycol (Im assuming the glycol didnt have rust inhibitors). Waiting. JavaScript is disabled. Posted on January 12, 2020 Hey Grant! I can see where a mini fridge would not provide a large enough negative thermal mass. Had a question about the aquarium pump setup you have recirculating the glycol/water in the cooler. Any updates? I found getting the evaporator into the cooler at the right height without bending the copper was the most challenging part of the build. Im not sure what size tubing youre using, but I went with 3/8 ID tubing, so thats the sized quick disconnects that I used. Did you leave it in? I have nothing to prove this theory, it just seemed like it would work best that way at the time. First I had to get another small hole cut in the side of the plywood housing so I could run the inkbird wires inside towards the AC unit and power cables. Good luck with your build!!! Register today and take advantage of membership benefits. Using a hole saw and then a jig saw fixed this problem fairly quickly. It wound up being 26 tall, 29 deep, and 41 long. All you need is some refrigeration knowledge, an EPA Section 608 license, and know how to braze. The condenser simply wasnt built to dissipate THAT much thermal energy. Does the fermenter temp match the temp of your glycol reservoir, therefore your ink itd gives an actual reading of the fermenter temp? Temp of glycol and water wont go below 82.5. (You need to add a condensor fan if you plan on chilling a larger volume of glycol, there's too much thermal mass for the light duty condenser to dissipate). As usual for me, nothing ever goes easy. However, she definitely started to stabilize (you'll see the inkbird sitting at 47F with a target of 29F; fermenter is at 49.5F near the bottom and at 50.3F near the lid). Cheers to many tasty beers. I'll throw some pictures up to show the innards and the frame I welded to secure the bulkhead without cracking it (like also happened to the acrylic I tried previously). Do you think a mini fridge would achieve the same return. I see inkbird has an aquarium probe and a temp probe do you suspect one is better than the other or will the stainless temp probe survive the glycol bath the same (or differently) then the aquarium coated probe. As far as changing out the glycol, I havent replaced it yet, but it might be about time to think about doing so. Ive seen them plenty of times before in the past at Walmart as well as Target. I used Metzon's notion and set up the fridge as a 10gal tank, with two circuits (planning on adding a second vessel, likely 7gal). Thanks for sharing. Im afraid I wouldnt have had much of an answer for you if it continued to be stubborn. No idea how to even begin figuring out the math on this, so I'd put as much liquid volume in the freezer as could reasonably fit (gotta maintain some circulation space). The Stasis looks neat and has pumps and controllers already installed. Sneezles61. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. It doesnt hurt that it classes things up a bit!
Since we dont have to go super cold to maintain fermentation temps, we can use the super high heat capacity of water and create a happy medium of a mix of glycol and water. Hinged top on cooler side. It might be a bit overkill removing it, but it might help keep things a bit more sanitary in the long run. The trick to this part is to go extremely slowly bending small sections at a time. Haven't been able to brew since the last batch. It really doesnt seem to have any trouble keeping up with the heat in the garage and seems to be working quite well. Are you worried about temparature gradient inside of the fermenter?
First, I cut four sets of three holes in the top of the cooler lid.
The fridge I'm using is small at only 2.65 cf so you wouldn't be able to fit much more in it. Got a window ac in my workshed. Unfortunately, Im not quite sure the exact size of the pump for recirculating they glycol. Hey Marshall! On the fermenter, I also ran two short lengths of tubing connected to the male end of the liquid quick disconnect.
Are you looking to be able to control the fermentation then cold crash afterwards with one unit? How is it wired to turn on with the a/c unit? The 10 gal bath, set to 20*F, is capable of getting my uninsulated fermenter down to 42*F. This does tend to tax the glycol fridge, and it runs continuously even with a fan blowing on thr condenser. Unless you guessed ZERO guess again. Im not really worried about any gradients at all. I have a glycol reservoir in the back of my kegerator and it keeps ales at low 60s very nicely. Once I get the pump and tubing Ill decide on where drill the holes. I had to think for a minute to remember which wires youre talking about, but I believe I did just tie them back into the metal housing. To be 100% honest, Im not exactly sure.
Anyone use the freezer part of a fridge as a glycol chiller? No more draining water out of the cooler twice daily! I know that the duty cycle on this is prob much lower that when used as a standard window air conditioner, but does it add a lot of heat to your garage without outdoor venting?
I really dont think adding multiple pumps for different fermenters would pose any issues at all. To help prevent any splashing from making its way out of the cooler, I spray foamed the spot at the top of the cooler I had cut for the copper tubing entrance. Thanks again. I have an SS Brewtech unitank that the glycol is chilling and it came with a pump to be used for the temperature control. After 2 hours it had stalled at 54F when starting at 62F.
Finally got it running and it wont chill and cant figure out why. Matt, one more question, those 3 wires that were attached to the condenser, did you reattach them to to base of the unit for grounding purposes? I thought about the window ac diy build but Im not sure Id be happy with the look of it. Separate the cooling coils and submerge them in the glycol? Have you noticed any corrosion issues? That is valuable information that you shared tjthanks for your continued updates and look forward to your findings! nice job with your build just wanted to know what size pump did you use to pump the glycol through your feed lines?
I plan on using an itc308. Hi Ariel! My other thought was make a wide enough platform that I can put the CF5 and roll chiller under it and slide it out like a drawer if needed. Now that youve been running it for the better part of a year, have you run into any durability issues? My setup currently runs pretty infrequently and doesnt seem to have any issue at all keeping up with things. Build a 2x2 platform on some casters and maybe box it in with the condenser end open and some side vents to pull in air.
There is some shelf space left but I don't plan to use it. Yes I filled it with about 8 gallons last night for a test run.
Follow up- sucessfully hit 35*F and hit the beer with gelatin. Thanks! It gave me the kick in the pants to start mine. Im really not sure what it would take to crash multiple fermenters at the same time, but unless you get super crazy with it, I dont think youd have much problem at all. Glycol is a funny thing. Thanks for sharing your build details. It also helps hold things where theyre supposed to be just a bit better so that theres less risk of damaging the copper tubing. The common option of an ice bath in a cooler is too much of a hassle - replacing frozen bottles several times a day wasn't going to work for me. Id hate to give you bad advice so Ill definitely defer to the experts on the subject. Ive ran it a a couple times for a few minutes and gets ice cold. First things first was finding a suitable window AC unit.
I did find some reviews that te aquarium probe plastic was breaking down after a couple of years. Sean here again, my son and I just picked up our cooler and we are getting closer, and are super excited. I've got a batch that I'll be dry hopping tomorrow and then cold crashing Sunday. Im sorry if this is a simple answer I cant make my brain understand it for some reason. Im sure you could make a water tank, put in a fridge and control pumps and temps with Johnson controller But that would take some doing and money It definitely took me more time to go this route, but I learned a TON and I have the pride in knowing that I built everything myself. As you mentioned the look was off putting as was the foot print. I guess it really just depends on what the mini fridge is rated for. Im not very familiar with electronics and what different things are designed to do, so I decided to go analog just to keep things a bit easier for my brain. Hi Matt- Ive been looking all over for these kind of plans. Sure did. We need to slowly bend the copper tubing so that the cooling fins will fit into our cooler. Switched on the FTSs for the first time to start the crash chill today. Thanks for the kind comment! We finally have everything built and plugged in! Any thoughts on this? Im almost done with my build!
Very nice! Besides making room for the cooler to fit up close without having to bend the evaporator all that much. Im glad you enjoyed my article! I went the way of the converted window air conditioner and it works great. Nice carpentry. Im highly impressed and inspired by your build. Can send photos if needed as I took pictures the whole way thru. The stainless coil that runs down through the center of the fermenter is fairly deep reaching and I just let it do its thing. There is a black foam on the bottom and edge that is a PITA to peel off. Im glad you got some use out of my build write-up! The A/C units inkbird actually has a small power strip connected to it, so when the glycol solution rises to above the specified temperature, it actually powers the A/C unit as well as a small pump inside the cooler to keep the glycol recirculating over the cooling fins. I also installed a small aquarium pump inside the reservoir that will turn on and off with the AC unit to keep the glycol solution moving. I went with the regular temp probe, and so far it has been working out great. The cooler I used is an Igloo 54qt roller cooler. Cheers! Both the AC unit and aquarium pump are plugged into it so they both turn on and off at the same time. In any case, good luck with your build!! I made one and it worked surprisingly well. If you get it working, definitely let me know! A word on AC units for other folks who are using this design a digital unit is no more difficult than an analog unit to set up. Will be mostly be doing ales . So the coil in the cooler will be immersed water? Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Looks good! It may not display this or other websites correctly. I decided on a commercial food bin slightly bigger than the one I showed in the photos.
I always just did lagers in a controlled fridge, but I am a bit stuck in working out environmental control for my English ales, which are my love and my focus. I don't know how I missed this thread! Mini-firdge Stainless Glycol Reservoir, What Connector to Use? In case anyone is following- the first two hours of run time demonstrated a problem. If at all possible, Ive found that its best to try to keep the full cooling fin submerged. BruControl: Brewery control & automation software.
Theres no corrosion that I can see and it doesnt seem to have lost any of its accuracy. No problem at all. I figured that bending it so that it stood vertical would make it easier to keep things low in the glycol and chill a bit better. So far, so good! Figured it was good.
Easy question. Cheers! Ok. By Matt McRoberts. Yep. Cheers to Metzen for laying the ground work. This seems to be the happy spot for my setup so that the AC unit isnt running constantly trying to cool the solution and it stays cold enough to chill my fermenters easily.
Sounds like your conditions are similar Thanks. No more buying huge amounts of ice! For the actual glycol lines, I taped two liquid lines together so that I could insulate them together more easily. I dont use. Building my own DIY glycol chiller was easy as well as inexpensive, but the amount of information on the internet about how to build one is pretty lacking. Chilling great now! I noticed you bent yours so the evaporator was standing vertical instead of horizontal. I was thinking about bending mini fridge freezer into a container and trying that but Im not sure it would be enough to cold crash. Looking for something for my new CF5 unitank from Spike Brewing. I had a similar idea but not use glycol and to pump it through a heater core with a fan behind it to cool my fem chamber that I added to the small fridge.
Should I swap it to high fan? I'll keep this thread updated as I test my first brew and make observations.
i have a question for you: Im really not sure if a dorm fridge would work or not. I found a few build logs that other people had done, but I needed more info! Agree with transamguy, really happy to be coming to the thread, if only today. Now that everything has been fully put together and the glycol solution added to the reservoir, it was finally time to plug things in, set temps on the controller and let it do its thing!! Dont do what I did at first and order parts that were different sizes and incompatible because of it. Sorry to butt-in, but I can add some insight. Matt, thanks for the quick response,I really appreciate it.
Good make a glysol cooler out of this.
I dont think you would really hurt anything by leaving it on, but I would still try to peel as much off as possible. Also just curious what are the dimensions of your whole assembly? For my system, I shot for a 1:2 ratio of glycol to water. I didnt check it when I bought it. Not pretty, but I insulated the lines and fridge.
With the plywood housing fully put together, I decided it was probably a good idea to glue in some screens over the vents to help keep more of the garage crud out of the system. This gets me going.
What is a good email for you? I cant remember exactly where I got it from, but theyre pretty easy to find at a lot of different places.
Great write-up.
Where did you purchase your tubing quick disconnects? Thanks for the step by steps on this. The two inkbirds arent actually working together. If not needed I'm fine not spending the time on a $12 part. 3/8 Hose Barb Body https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=118169&catid=743 Unfortunately, I only have a few pictures of this process. I was considering this option, but looking to control two fermenters at 10gal each. Probably a little more than I wanted since food grade glycol is pretty expensive. I slowly started my own build this week. One inkbird has the temp probe going to the fermentor to determine when to turn on/off the pump and the second inkbird has the temp probe inside the cooler of glycol solution telling the A/C unit when to turn on and off. Here's some dumb math. The compressor got fairly warm in a short time sp that might be another benefit of less water/glycol. I have not purchased an A/C unit yet, and was thinking about getting a portable unit is that I could vent it through the duct that typically comes with these units. Yeah thats a good idea then no messing with wiring. Will it be an issue with the glycol if I leave it? For the black foam stuff, I dont think my ac unit had any on the actual cooling fins, so my advice might not be the best. I wonder if you put some frozen 2 liter bottles in the fridge to take up some space and help keep the temp down, if it would get cooler? While digital units can be used, theyre MUCH more labor intensive and expensive to make work. Nevermind my last question. I wonder if it would end up turning on your fridge's compressor way more than it's designed for by constantly bringing in some heat into the freezer compartment? Great plans Matt. I didnt have to do a ton of bending just a couple tweaks and its sitting flush on bottom of cooler. The only way you can increase the cooling capacity would be increase the size of the (negative) thermal mass, and/or ditch the convective cooling of the glycol and work out a way to immerse the cooling coils from the fridge unit into the glycol itself. Matt, disregard my prior post! Hey Mike! Cool, thanks for the quick reply again, I have a picture I would like to share with you of our current build. Having a dedicated glycol temp controller and then separate temp controllers for my fermenters allows me to adjust everything independently depending on what stage my beer is at and also allows the glycol chiller to maintain a steady 25 degree temperature. Im sure it happens to small extent, but theres no way that I can really control it at all. any chance to test this yet? Im glad you were able to get some use out of the build thread and get a glycol unit of your own up and running. You could make your own extremely efficient glycol chiller out of a mini fridge, freezer, or a wall unit. Let me know what route you decide to go! Not only has the ice water solution finally gone away, but temp control is truly a set and forget affair. With my set up I would typically have 5.5 gal in the fermenter and I could see these Being at diffferent temps. It also helps to cut a small gateway for the chiller tubing to set into so the lid can close fully.
Was curious on the temp probe. If you give it a shot, definitely let me know how things work out! I'm searching for a larger container to use as a reservoir to fill the full width of the shelf it sits on. I'm a few degrees away from where I'd like to be. For controlling the temperature and turning on/off the AC unit, I decided to go with an Inkbird ITC-308. I have beer fermenting right now, but once this current batch is packaged up, Ill probably replace the glycol solution to keep things fresh. No more spilling water all over the garage floor!
Mike.
All of this is in a garage that stays around 80 degrees during the summer. Hoping this will do the trick and enable varied temp ranges down to cold crashing.
Does your set up struggle with cold crashing? Next, we need to disconnect the thermostat and trick it into thinking that it always needs to run. I messed with the knobs and settings and it kicked on for me. If you had a larger unit i'm sure you could. Category: Equipment Tags: DIY, Glycol Chiller.
Or is there a temp differential between your glycol reservoir and the fermenter? Thanks for the info. It will get better efficiency and less chance of freezing up the water in the solution and humidity in the air. The first one is on the glycol chiller so that I can control accurately what temperature the glycol solution is currently at. Yes-ish, I'm currently wet testing the "vessel." I use the refrigerators or my beer storage but then had an ah ha moment with unused freeezer. Nice work on your build. Thanks Matt. When Im just maintaining fermentation temps, it seems to run maybe 20% of the time. Looks really nice. I definitely wouldnt overload things by adding too many fermenters, but I would imagine it could handle 3 or 4 fermenters without any issues just as long as you arent trying to crash cool them all to serving temperatures at the same time. Lets put 3-4 gallons of glycol water in freezer then attach a pump. Not sure if that matters. Im dealing with very high energy bills here. Change). I dont have any experience with the aquarium version at all, but surely it would work just as well as the regular versions and maybe even a bit better? I'm transitioning from a fermentation chamber to a glycol cooling system using a converted mini fridge with a freezer compartment as a chill source. Its finally time to add the glycol/water solution and get things rolling! This should give me the low freezing point I want without killing my chilling ability. I found a 2 y.o. (LogOut/
As far as the housing goes, I opted for a plywood box with casters and handles to make it a bit easier to move things around. Thats great to hear that it started working for you! Thanks for the responses. Thank you so much for getting back to me, I really appreciate!! Thanks, So was looking for a solution and the idea of an IC or "attemperator" seemed a good one, just couldn't figure out how to do it. BUT, the higher the concentration of glycol, the lower the heat capacity.
Likes, dislikes, anything you would do differently? The AC unit seems to keep up with demand really pretty well and is usually fully recovered within about 30 minutes after reaching the target temp. Great article Matt! Before wiring I set temp to lowest and mode to high cool. When Im crashing down to serving temps its running probably 75% of the time but only over an hour to an hour and a half until it hits the target temp. Plus I travel for work and wouldn't be around enough to be able to manage it.
Complete with vent cutouts and a good black staining, it really made things look pretty nice! how accurate are the temps when reading from the fermenter? Can i put several pumps to recirculate in several fermentors with a STC 1000 for each fermentor?. Keeps the glycol cold for the long running.
Sounds like a brilliant idea. Thanks and greettings from Argentina. Other than getting a bit dusty from living in the garage, it still seems to be at 100%! Thanks for the great write up! The glycol will lower the freezing point of the solution and the water will keep the heat capacity sufficiently high so we can pull heat out of the fermenter. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Do you still get to use the rest of the fridge for something else? I did see that but I was thinking about simplifying things.
Might make it look decent. Thought about fabricating but I'll wait till I get a few runs in. I ran the probe through the top of the cooler with a wrap around the probe right into the glycol. And thinking. For years now, Ive been lusting over the commercial glycol chillers available through different companies such as SS Brewtech and Penguin, but could just never justify the huge amount of money they cost. Set the differential to 3*F so the pump kicks on at 38*F. This is pushing the limits of the system as the pump kicks on every 110 minutes or so and runs for about 12 minutes to get back to 35F, the fridge doesn't get much down time. While cold crashing beer in the heat of the summer, it wasnt uncommon for me to burn 100lbs of ice in a day trying to maintain temps. To Rehash the numbers- thats roughly 12 gallons of beer being chilled by 10gallons of glycol at 20F. is it possible to use ice maker for glycol fermenter? I dont have a great grasp on that subject and Id hate to give you bad advice.
Almost fully covering the coil. I've been on hiatus from homebrewing for almost like 2 years, what have I been missing? Yes, great work again. I've thought about this a bit, I have a minifridge that I straightened out the freezer portion and have thought of putting a reservoir around that.
I have more money in glycol than equipment,. Hey Ed! My fermentation room stays at 68 all year. (LogOut/ Thanks!!! Im think of putting a closed vessel with glycol mixture. No problem at all! Thanks for the quick reply.
Put some thick rubber under compressor and condenser section to help with vibration amd noise. Yeah the Stasis looks nice and is the cheapest of the glycol chillers but at $659 there is no way.