Grainfather Conical Fermenter Cooling Pump Kit

[Polcho]

Well my first AG brew day went well, but the fermentation side is a bit lacking.

I cooled the wort to 20c thinking that by the time I had aerated it and it was in the fermenter, it would be about right, at the 18 c required on the brew method.

Sadly not, it was still 20, so I must have taken the temperature without it being properly mixed in the Brewzilla.

Anyway, it wasn’t dropping very fast at all. I pitched the yeast before bed at a 18.5 c according to the fermenter readout.

was on the go by the morning, but after work it was 19 c. It’s been at 20 plus for a couple of days now. I’ve decided to try the Grainfather Conical Fermenter Cooling Pump Kit. Ordered a couple of days ago, should be here by the time I get home today.

I’ll hook it up and let you know how it goes.

I’m supposed to bring the temp down to 14c after fermentation for the dry hop. Hopefully this will get it done for me.

 

[hoppyscotty]

I'm looking at one of these so will be interested to see how you get on. I'm hatching a plan for a glycol chiller on the cheap by getting a 2nd hand chest freezer, putting a bucket of glycol in it and using the pump kit to control temp. Maybe it wont have enough capacity to cold crash quickly but a bucket of glycol at minus 15 should be able to handle the trickle of slightly warmed glycol from the return line. At least to keep the wort at sensible temperatures through the summer. It's cheap enough to try.

 

[Polcho]

Cool, I’ll take some photos for you.

 

[Polcho]

Well it arrived!
I have to say, it was just about the easiest thing ever to connect up.

It comes in a box with the hoses, wires, pump and a bag contains two Nylon washer type things. No idea what they are for, I assumed to place in the connectors. They do go in that space, but are such a bad fit that I thought they would restrict the flow. So I left them out.

Full instructions on the box lid (apart from the white washers).

I cut the lid off a 45L from that I was saving for the lotti, connected it up and tried it with just tap water at 15c. It cooled the fermenter by 1.5 c in 45 minutes.

I have freezer pouches in the freezer left over from packaging, I’ll use those when I need to.

The instructions say to do the connectors up tight with a spanner. There Is no way they would not leak. It’s like throwing a sausage up the Dartford tunnel! I used some ptfe, no problem.

I’m really pleased with it.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

What does it actually do, P? I can’t quite read the instructions from the photo and my iPad doesn’t seem to want to play the videos :-)

 

[Polcho]

I think I need to do something else to get them to upload fully, never mind.

So the fermenter has a double skin, water jacket and a heating element.

Heater works great, keeping it cool is a different story.

This kit just runs cool water around the built in water jacket and cools the wort. The fermenter has two connecting ports to connect up to a glycol chiller, this is a cheaper way, and to be fair, It’s going to be all I require.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Looks good. Think the idea is you hook up the end of the lines into a bucket of water so it sucks up the cold water out of the bucket and returns the slightly warmed water back to the bucket. You can add ice or freezer packs to the bucket. Also can be controlled by the Grainfather conical fermenter controller so the pump will be turned on and off on demand as the controller regulates temp. IN that configuration I'm sure it will work fine to regulate temp at normal fermenting temperature like around 18 to 25 degrees C. Not sure you could cold crash or lager with it.

My idea is to hook upto a bucket of glycol in a freezer to see if you can get glycol chiller like performance out of it for a fraction of the cost of a glycol chiller. Not sure a freezer has the required umph to properly cold crash the beer in any quick time, but over the course of 24hrs or so should be able to manage it.

You'll have to report back once you've used it.

 

[Polcho]

You summed it up Hoppy, I have beer fermenting in it now, this weekend will be a big test, it gets hot in that shed in the sun.

According to the method, I am supposed to reduce the temp from 18 to 14 at the end of fermentation for the dry hop.
I’m hoping that will work, I think it will with all the frozen pouches in the tub, we will see!

 

[Polcho]

Trying the videos again.

 

[Regfixit]

I

Looks good. Think the idea is you hook up the end of the lines into a bucket of water so it sucks up the cold water out of the bucket and returns the slightly warmed water back to the bucket. You can add ice or freezer packs to the bucket. Also can be controlled by the Grainfather conical fermenter controller so the pump will be turned on and off on demand as the controller regulates temp. IN that configuration I'm sure it will work fine to regulate temp at normal fermenting temperature like around 18 to 25 degrees C. Not sure you could cold crash or lager with it.

My idea is to hook upto a bucket of glycol in a freezer to see if you can get glycol chiller like performance out of it for a fraction of the cost of a glycol chiller. Not sure a freezer has the required umph to properly cold crash the beer in any quick time, but over the course of 24hrs or so should be able to manage it.

You'll have to report back once you've used it.

I have the cooler kit and I connect it to the recirculation water bath of my beer chiller. I also use the 12V output to the pump to switch my chiller on if needed via a relay. The water bath is around 1C and I find it can cool the fermenter down from 20C to 3C in an hour or so and then hold it there indefinitely in a room that is around 20C with sun coming through the window at time so I think it is ideal for cold crash.
Your glycol idea I think will work even better as the glycol will be sub-zero. The question is what is the refrigeration capacity of your freezer. It's a hard number to find. My cooler tells me it can chill 100L of beer by 10C in an hour and I think I worked out somewhere that amounts to about 1200W of cooling capacity vs its power consumption of 500W with compressor running.
Freezers seem to state something called "freezing capacity" measured in kg/hr or kg/24hr. This is based on ISO 15502 and basically means how much food you can load into it in a period of time and it hold its freezing temperature. I looked at Currys and their small freezers are about 4kg per 24 hr and larger ones 15kg or more.
Hard to know without buying the ISO standard how many Watts this represents but at a qualitative level I would think if a freezer can freeze a kilogram of "stuff" every couple of hours it should be able to chill your beer and keep it chilled, especially if your fermenter is insulated (I have the insulation coat for my Grainfather conical)

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Trying the videos again.

Working now

 

[Polcho]

I'm looking at one of these so will be interested to see how you get on. I'm hatching a plan for a glycol chiller on the cheap by getting a 2nd hand chest freezer, putting a bucket of glycol in it and using the pump kit to control temp. Maybe it wont have enough capacity to cold crash quickly but a bucket of glycol at minus 15 should be able to handle the trickle of slightly warmed glycol from the return line. At least to keep the wort at sensible temperatures through the summer. It's cheap enough to try.

So the water method works fine in the (hot) shed with frozen packs thrown in.
it will take it down to 18 and hold it there no problem. The shed is hot unfortunately, but it coped fine.

I needed to reduce to 14 for the hop stand. It struggled at that. I think your glycol Idea may be worth a try.

 

[Polcho]

I

I have the cooler kit and I connect it to the recirculation water bath of my beer chiller. I also use the 12V output to the pump to switch my chiller on if needed via a relay. The water bath is around 1C and I find it can cool the fermenter down from 20C to 3C in an hour or so and then hold it there indefinitely in a room that is around 20C with sun coming through the window at time so I think it is ideal for cold crash.
Your glycol idea I think will work even better as the glycol will be sub-zero. The question is what is the refrigeration capacity of your freezer. It's a hard number to find. My cooler tells me it can chill 100L of beer by 10C in an hour and I think I worked out somewhere that amounts to about 1200W of cooling capacity vs its power consumption of 500W with compressor running.
Freezers seem to state something called "freezing capacity" measured in kg/hr or kg/24hr. This is based on ISO 15502 and basically means how much food you can load into it in a period of time and it hold its freezing temperature. I looked at Currys and their small freezers are about 4kg per 24 hr and larger ones 15kg or more.
Hard to know without buying the ISO standard how many Watts this represents but at a qualitative level I would think if a freezer can freeze a kilogram of "stuff" every couple of hours it should be able to chill your beer and keep it chilled, especially if your fermenter is insulated (I have the insulation coat for my Grainfather conical)

This beer chiller. I not familiar with it. Do you have a link to one please.

 

[Regfixit]

This beer chiller. I not familiar with it. Do you have a link to one please.

CWP100
It's an inline chiller, so you connect your keg out beer line to the input line and beer tap to the output line. I keep my kegs at ambient room temperature and the chiller copes no problem. The chiller has a tank of water that gets chilled down and the products flow in metal coils immersed in this water tank and get cooled as they pass through. Additionally there is a recirculation pump that pumps the water from the water bath in a loop. If you have bar font style taps, they often have the beer line encased in an insulating "python" that also contains a flow and return for the recirculation water. The idea is that your cold beer stays cold in the pipes after the chiller because the beer line is in contact with the recirculation water pipes which are cold. Some fonts also use the water to chill the font itsef so you get condensation or ice (if using glycol) on the font itself.

This model supports 3 separate beer lines simultaneously. It's a bit dearer than some other beer chillers like a Maxi 210, but the difference is that most other chillers need time to form a big ice bank before they will be effective - so maybe need to be on for an hour or two before useable, but this one uses a metal block and within a few minutes is down to temperature and usable. This suits me as I can turn it on in the evening and be drinking cold beer a few minutes later without having to have planned ahead.

When I connect it to my conical I use the submersible pump that comes with the cooling kit and put that into the water bath. I do this rather than simply connecting the cooler's own recirc water pump to it is so I can run my cooler to pour beer from the kegs, without cooling my fermenter if it doesn't need cooling at that time.

 

[Polcho]

Thanks, that's a lot of info. Looks like a good solution.