Controlling Ferment Tempwith An Immersion Chiller

[GreggJ]

Has anyone tried this if so does it work? What are your thoughts...
My 50 litre s/s fermenter doesnt fit in any fridges but am considering utilising a copper coil, pond pump and temperature controller i have and running chilled water (from keg fridge) through the chiller in the fermenter and maintaining the temp with a digital temp controllor as i have all the parts on hand.
Cheers

Gregg

 

[tdh]

3G!

How about coiling poly pipe around the outside of your fermenter and running chilled water through that?

tdh

 

[Kai]

My only thoughts are that it would work quite well but you'd need to take care sanitising your immersible bits. With the outside of the fermenter well insulated and adequate coil I think you would have a fairly cheap and effective cooling method.

 

[GreggJ]

tdh
Pipe on the outside was my earlier thought. Less chance of infection, might try each way with just water in the fermenter and see how temp goes.
3g

 

[mika]

I tried the poly pipe around the fermentor, as has Pumpy. Hopefully he's had more success than I had. The water heats up too fast, I was only using a ~6L esky with a big ice block and you'd be lucky if that lasted 15mins.
I also experienced dramas with the temp of the fermentor still getting higher than the temp of the water in the esky, still haven't figured exactly why that was, but suspect the poly pipe acts as a blanket for the fermentor and as the process gives off heat it get's trapped and can't get out.

If you can get the chiller thru the SS vessel with some kind of sanitary fitting, and keep the water cold within the fridge...should be good. Can see you needing a big volume of water so that it doesn't heat up significantly on a hot day.

Just my 2c.

 

[Wortgames]

I believe copper can react undesirably with the fermenting beer. It's OK for boiling wort for an hour or two but being immersed for several days while the stuff ferments is a different story.

I would use a stainless coil as an immersion chiller/heater.