Ok so backstory - I’m an electric all-grain brewer who has been brewing and kegging for about 5 years. The compressor in my 20 year old repurposed deep freeze finally quit, and I’m in the process of moving. So I need to set my brewery back up, and am ready for some improvements.
I don’t have much in the way of fermentation control. I stick my plastic buckets in my kegerator when there’s room, sometimes it’s a swamp cooler with a t-shirt and a fan in the laundry tub. I want to change this - enter glycol.
I have a 12,000btu a/c that I want to build a glycol cooler with (won’t rehash that part, cooling and circulating glycol is well covered on the internet). I’ll probably get an ss brewtech conical with a jacket and cooling coil, and home brew a temperature controller, this part I’m comfortable with. Here’s where I’m into slightly uncharted territory.
I want to build several chilling compartments, plywood and foam type things, and chill them with a computer water cooling radiator/fan off my glycol loop. I googled and couldn’t find anything - is this a decent idea? I feel like 12000 btu is overkill, so it should have no issue keeping a few gallons of glycol cold, and I can then in turn keep kegs at whatever temperature I want. I’m thinking little boxes that hold 2-4 corny kegs, so I can dispense different styles at different temps. Has anyone tried this? I know that fan coil units are how commercial refrigerators work anyway, will one of these little cpu coolers work? I have no clue how to even begin to calculate that.
I’m just drooling over perfect control of both fermentation and dispensing temps, as well as remote taps in the kitchen... I just don’t want to cannibalize an A/C, glue together a bunch of styrofoam and plywood, and then throw it all in the garbage because it was a dumb idea. Feedback?
Submitted September 19, 2017 at 07:21AM by sirduckbert http://ift.tt/2xhCVRq Homebrewing
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