Cooling a conical fv

[Moad]

Yeah not much around that big in upright freezers, fridges are hard to find at an affordable price too.

I'd almost be better off selling the conical and buying a jacketed one!

 

[TheWiggman]

• A domestic fridge will probably not have enough refrigeration capacity to adequately cool the fermenter - especially so when the volume of air is increased and a DIY cool box has been put in place (ie unlikely to be fully air tight and thus would allow infiltration) - you'll need to transfer ~ 260 watts of heat out of the fermenter for chillback over 8 hours

You're clearly not a dope Klangers but I can't agree with this. A fermenting ale doesn't produce much energy, and a dometic fridge (which can maintain 4°C in a hot environment) will have no trouble dealing with this. The air in the fridge only needs to be held a degree or 2 lower than the ferment temp, say 16°C. If you have a 120W compressor on a fridge then all things taken into account, the fridge will easily handle this.
That said I'm not sure what's meant by 'chillback'. I assume the wort is chilled to pitching temp, yeast pitched, then left in the fridge. Haven't seen a working domestic fridge that couldn't handle this at 18°C. Currents and boundary layers are a non-issue once the brew has reached steady state. There are countless examples of people doing this with success on this site.

An idea Moad - you could get a small chest freezer and build a chamber up vertically from it similar to a keezer build. You'd need good insulation on the built up section if you want to keep an even temp through the wort/beer and you're need to syphon the beer out. Putting the FV in and out would also be a bit of effort but it's workable. Only reason I suggest this is because I use a chest freezer for 23l brews and it's a winner.

Though... would probably be cheaper and easier to buy a fridge to fit
Keep it simple unless your quest is to complicate it.

 

[klangers]

You're clearly not a dope Klangers but I can't agree with this. A fermenting ale doesn't produce much energy, and a dometic fridge (which can maintain 4°C in a hot environment) will have no trouble dealing with this. The air in the fridge only needs to be held a degree or 2 lower than the ferment temp, say 16°C. If you have a 120W compressor on a fridge then all things taken into account, the fridge will easily handle this.
That said I'm not sure what's meant by 'chillback'. I assume the wort is chilled to pitching temp, yeast pitched, then left in the fridge. Haven't seen a working domestic fridge that couldn't handle this at 18°C. Currents and boundary layers are a non-issue once the brew has reached steady state. There are countless examples of people doing this with success on this site.

An idea Moad - you could get a small chest freezer and build a chamber up vertically from it similar to a keezer build. You'd need good insulation on the built up section if you want to keep an even temp through the wort/beer and you're need to syphon the beer out. Putting the FV in and out would also be a bit of effort but it's workable. Only reason I suggest this is because I use a chest freezer for 23l brews and it's a winner.

Though... would probably be cheaper and easier to buy a fridge to fit
Keep it simple unless your quest is to complicate it.

I was mainly talking about losses through the less-than-perfect home made insulation panels if the were used to expand the domestic fridge to fit the fermenter. We're talking a 100L fermenter.

I have a domestic fridge with my fermenter in it and yes it works fine all the way down to 0 degrees. I bet though if I played around with it and made it 4 times the size to fit a fermenter 4 times the capacity it would struggle to bring it all down to cold conditioning temps.

Chillback = chilling for cold conditioning. Generally breweries like to achieve this as rapidly as possible so they can terminate the fermentation at their desired FG.

 

[Moad]

I use a smaller fridge with up to 40L now and it works fine. It does take 2 days to bring 40L down from 21 to 3 degrees for CC but no big deal.

Certainly don't want to overcomplicate it, I'm checking the fridges out this afternoon so I'll have some details shortly. Failing that the freezer extension could work but I think I'd be in the same position trying to find the right size!

 

[Moad]

Happy days, the fridge will fit the fermenter (just). Got about 30mm on one side and about 10mm above, will be a bit tricky cleaning but I'll make do. Will have about 100mm gap from the rim of the fermenter to the roof of the fridge.

Will have a bit of space for an extra fermenter or two if I decide to knock out 2 different batches in a day too.

Will post back here when I pick it up in a few weeks.

 

[Feldon]

There's a bloke in the US who has recently built a 6' x 4' walk-in cool room run by a wall-mounted air-con unit.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/orthocooler-walk-build-489363/

He's using it to chill kegs, so getting the temp down to just ale ferment temps should be a doddle.

 

[Moad]

Well here it is... $150 and heavy as fk

Will fit the conical on one side and 3 x 20 on the other. Double brew day = 150 litres in the fridge

 

[Moad]

Sorry I had to....

 

[mfeighan]

looks great