Biulding a cold room for fermentation.

[beeronanisland]

Can anyone share any advice or point me in the direction of some good advice/instructions on building a cold room that would be big enought to store two 240l fvs, please? Any thoughts on moisture control, insulation, ventilation? Would using a simple AC unit like these ones be ok?

http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...ult&ct=result&resnum=3&sqi=2&ved=0CDkQ8wIwAg#


http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...ult&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q8wIwBA#

EDIT:
Should explai, it's for brewing in a relatively warm country, where ambient temperature is between 15-25 year round, so we won't need great efforts for heating/cooling..

Any other considerations?

Many thanks

Victoria

 

[Aleman]

Wibblers brewery did just this (For the cask store).

The walls and roof are lined with 75mm Celotex Sheets, over which a plastic membrane has been applied. Cooling is provided by a wall mounted AC unit similar to This (with it's external unit of course). It did require fettling in order to allow cooling to go lower than the unit is designed too (16C iirc) . . .I think it was the addition of a 10Kohm resistor across the sensor wires that did it.

Another craftbrewer near me pinched the idea as well and has a great beer storage area

 

[evanvine]

I used to keep Tropical fish.
When going to various Aquarium shops I noticed a lot of them heated the room rather than the individual 100+ tanks.
Here we are talking 26-34C with just wall mounted fan heaters.
Don't know about the chilling side, I think Aleman's got that sussed!

 

[beeronanisland]

Thanks.

That sounds something like what we need to do, Aleman. Do you think there would be any problem with the co2 expulsion into a room like that? I don't want anyone to go poisoning themselves to death. But adding ventilation would make maintaining the temperature more difficult...

 

[timbim]

That sounds something like what we need to do, Aleman. Do you think there would be any problem with the co2 expulsion into a room like that? I don't want anyone to go poisoning themselves to death. But adding ventilation would make maintaining the temperature more difficult...

You will probably need to ventilate unless the Air Con does this as well. Even more of a problem will be the fact that to get rid of CO2, you want to be extracting from floor level, where the air is coolest, so removing even more of your investment in cooling. You may be able to extract the CO2 directly from the airlocks on the fermenters and
vent that, you'd need to involve a fan though, or the backpressure in the pipe might cause problems. Some commercial breweries capture the CO2 produced for injecting into bottles to minimise oxidation.

 

[beeronanisland]

Capturing the CO2 sounds like an interesting concept, but probably some way above technical abilities at this stage! Although, if anyone here has any more information on that I'd be intrigued to read it.

Now, would one 240l fv actually generate enough noxious CO2 that we would need to be extracting it constantly throughout the fermentation period, or could it be that we open ventilation/extraction sporadically in that time? For example, leave the FV in the closed room for the most volatile first 72 hours, therefore not interfering with the room's temperature in that important stage, then allow fresh air to circulate for a few hours for each of the following days?

Thanks

 

[chrisp]

I have a Gamko 6 keg cold cabinet with heating and cooling via the sit on self contained cooler and a warm air heater controlled by a temperature controller

There is a smaller one on ebay at the moment, too small for the size FV's you have in mind but cooler can just sit on top of the cabinet you are building and then you still have an insulated cabinet

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Gamko-FK4-Keg-Cra ... 1084wt_932

Chrisp

 

[timbim]

You can calculate the amount of CO2 that could be released in the fermentation from the fermentables content of the brew, and inform a decision based on that. A quick google finds this page which suggests that a maximum safe concentration is 10,000ppm, which equates to 1%, which is a decent point to start estimating from. CO2 certainly becomes a problem long before it starts reducing the oxygen concentration, which is what happens with N2. NMR rooms, which use a lot of liquid N2, and can suffer leaks, have O2 monitors with alarms. In this case, since the room isn't a normal workspace you wouldn't need an alarm, but I'd consider a CO2 monitor. Seeing a high reading on one would indicate that operating a venting system (bathroom extractor fan springs to mind!) and waiting for the reading to fall to safe levels before entering etc.

Jury rigging an extraction system for the airlocks wouldn't be too difficult, it would require a small fan continuously on with a pipe running to each airlock, and a valve for each one so it only draws gas from those that are operating. Taking a small quantity of gas like that out shouldn't present a problem for cooling.

 

[beeronanisland]

Well, that would be a simple solution (the CO2 monitor and a bathroom fan).

As would the pipe and valves...

I think I am overcomplicating things in my head. I'm imagining 240 or even 480 litres fermenting wouldn't create too much problematic CO2.

 

[timbim]

I think I am overcomplicating things in my head. I'm imagining 240 or even 480 litres fermenting wouldn't create too much problematic CO2.

480l starting at 1.050 and fermenting out to 1.000 (for simplicity's sake) by my calculations can produce something in the region of 6m3 (is there any superscript in this editor?) of CO2, so that would go well above the the safe limit of 1% in any sensible room. You would definitely want a monitor so that you'll know that the room's full of CO2 before you open the door, a face full of CO2 is unpleasant at best and might come as a bit of a shock!

I'd suggest a monitor and extraction system, if you're extracting from the airlocks directly you probably won't want anything as large as a bathroom fan. A lower tech answer would be to have an extractor fan near floor level and simply look at the monitor a few times a day and remove any built up CO2 by activating the fan. Obviously vent it outside, pumping it into another room would be somewhat counterproductive! That way you'd only run the fan as much as needed, saving wasting any cooling investment.

 

[evanvine]

I'd suggest a monitor

"Davey" lamps work well! :whistle:

 

[timbim]

I'd suggest a monitor

"Davey" lamps work well! :whistle:

Not really a great solution here, you'll find out if there's too much CO2 from the wall of it that piles out at you as you open the door before you see whether the lamp's still burning! I suppose you could do something with windows or webcams but that's probably more expensive

 

[unclepumble]

If you can seal the fermenters and pipe out of the tops, make a simple bubble pot and pipe the outlet outside.

A bubble pot is a small sealed vessel 1/3rd full of water you run your blow off tube from your fermenter into it so the outlet of the blow off tube is below the water level. (put an NRV in it to stop any syphoning back into the fermenter if there is a pressure drop.) you then vent the top of the pot using another tube outside the room, the co2 from your fermenters will buble through the water then vent off outside, you need to change the water from time to time as it will turn into carbonic acid.

An old fermenting bucket or an office 5 gal water bottle will do the job.

The other benifit is the bubble pot works like an airlock too.

It will also make it easier to recover any CO2 should you want to in future, note when recovering co2 you only recover a portiojn of the whole fermentation not all of it as the early stages produce less than disirable esters etc with the co2 produced.

UP