Glycol Chilling Advise

[3GiantsBrewing]

Hi all,
We are planning our 10HL brewing operation and nearing finalizing of purchase. We just have a couple of questions in regards to chilling. We will have 6 x 10HL fermenters and 1 X 10HL CLT, we plan to have glycol chiller with 2 x 5Hp condensers.

Firstly, we will use one 5Hp condenser to chill the six fermenters, the other condenser will be used to chill the CLT, cold crash fermenters and used as a backup if maintenance is needed on either condenser. Does this sound like a reasonable plan? Is our CLT too small?

Secondly, our brewhouse manufacturer is informing us that we will need a 10HL Glycol/Water reservoir tank to service the six fermenters. We believe that this is a little over kill! What do you recommend?

Thank you for your advice,
3 Giants Brewing

[jimvgjr]

The Chiller capacity should be more than adequate, with 10 HP total, for the load you outline. Redundancy is always a good thing, especially with cooling. A 10 HL glycol reservior does seem large for this size system- we would offer a system with a 100-200 gallon reservoir in this size range. An oversized reservoir is rarely a bad thing giving you a big flywheel to help with load spikes, however, but the cost of glycol should be considered when making this decision.

It is more common to have a CLT that is 2X your brew size (or even larger)- this enables you to draw off CL and leave a reserve amount, prechilled for the next batch (in case you will brew back to back) and help spread the cooling load of the CLT over a longer period of time.

Good Luck with your project.

Jim
Pro Chiller Systems.