Tec Brew Cooling

[kook]

I was just browsing (dreaming) through www.morebeer.com when I noticed they use a peltier (TEC) based system to cool their conical fermenters ( http://www.morebeer.com/catalog.php3?secID...ical+Fermentors ). Has anyone seen this used before? I'm tempted to experiment with this and see what kind of temperature drops I can get in 23 litres of brew.

It looks like they've just got a long SS probe running into the beer, with the probe welded to a plate on the cold side of the peltier. Chunky aluminium heatsink on the hot side with an 80-120mm cooling fan...

 

[PostModern]

Hehe. TECs for beer. Righto!

I was thinking about cooling 23L boils. Given how long the 20L bottle of hot water I mention here, has taken too cool off (14 hours and counting, although it is under a pile of towels...) I reckon some clever cooling technique is required. Rather than TECs, tho I was thinking more along the lines of a watercooling solution. Grab a pond pump, a radiator, fan and a big coil of copper pipe in the boiler. Apply what you already know about extreme cooled PCs and voila! You could even attach a thermostat to stop the pump and fan once you reach pitching temp!

 

[kook]

I've got a watercooled PC (BI Xtreme, Cyclone 5, eheim 1250), I'm pretty sure you do too. I havent experimented with peltiers before so this looks like a good excuse for me to try. I dont know about watercooling the boil though, as it only takes around 20 minutes with a wort chiller. I'd imagine a WC setup would take longer as the radiator can only dissapate so much heat. Would mean less water wasteage, but I'm planning to re-use the water from my wort chiller on my lawn
Watercooling the fermenter may be an idea, but even then you'd still battle to get it to within a few degrees of ambient, which in summer isnt very useful.

 

[PostModern]

I wasn't thinking of a tiny radiator for a wort chiller. More like a car radiator rather than a heater core. Also a huge mo-fo fan, not a 120mm PC thingy. Yes, useless for keeping a fermenter cool in summer. Just toying with the idea is all

 

[Doc]

Just reading their (b3) description of their cooling device.

Originally developed for the Space Shuttle, you can now use this technology at home to control temperature on your ferments when using a B3 stainless conical.

hahahahahahah.

Cheers,
Doc

 

[Brewmaster808]

Actually the probe is made of aluminum and coated with a expoy. If had lathe could turn out real easy. I picked these up on Ebay for 30 US dollars fully assembled.

 

[sosman]

There was some discussion re this a while back on brewboard.com. The consensus seemed to be that if you don't have unlimited funds, spending them on Peltiers for brewing is perhaps not the best use for them.