Thefatdoghead
Well-Known Member
Thought I would start a new thread on this system.
What the system is for people who dont already know, is a fermentation control without using a fridge.
Basically you have 2 stainless coils, a submersible pump, a jacket for the fermentor and a control unit for twmp control.
The system works perfect for fermentation although when it comes to pulling the temp down for crash chilling the problems start.
I tried 60L of watet at 2 deg C with an ambient of 30 degrees. The wort was at 22 deg to start. The wort stopped at 12 degrees and stayed there. The freezer could not keep up with the heat loss.
I then bought 20 litres of glycol and added 20L of distilled water to the glycol as per the chart i found online. Gravity is supposed to be 1.120 and im pretty close to that.
Chilled the glycol to -4 deg C and tried to chill the beer down again with no luck.
Im now going to try chill down to -27 just to crash the beer so i can transfer it to the keg.
Im thinking im going to need a glycol chiller but when i bought this system they do say you can crash chill to 1 or 2 degrees with a freezer system. Although reading it for the second time, all I see are numbers and words like 'should' and 'may'.
The second problem is that ive dumpped the trub off and now the beer is only just touching the coils inside the fementor. So it will never get down in temp anyway. Ill just give it a try and see what happens.
Ive sent an email to SS so lets see what they come back with.
What the system is for people who dont already know, is a fermentation control without using a fridge.
Basically you have 2 stainless coils, a submersible pump, a jacket for the fermentor and a control unit for twmp control.
The system works perfect for fermentation although when it comes to pulling the temp down for crash chilling the problems start.
I tried 60L of watet at 2 deg C with an ambient of 30 degrees. The wort was at 22 deg to start. The wort stopped at 12 degrees and stayed there. The freezer could not keep up with the heat loss.
I then bought 20 litres of glycol and added 20L of distilled water to the glycol as per the chart i found online. Gravity is supposed to be 1.120 and im pretty close to that.
Chilled the glycol to -4 deg C and tried to chill the beer down again with no luck.
Im now going to try chill down to -27 just to crash the beer so i can transfer it to the keg.
Im thinking im going to need a glycol chiller but when i bought this system they do say you can crash chill to 1 or 2 degrees with a freezer system. Although reading it for the second time, all I see are numbers and words like 'should' and 'may'.
The second problem is that ive dumpped the trub off and now the beer is only just touching the coils inside the fementor. So it will never get down in temp anyway. Ill just give it a try and see what happens.
Ive sent an email to SS so lets see what they come back with.
