Cold room temp control for plastic conicals, max practical size limits?

[DeaninMilwaukee]

My business partner and I are working on our business plan for our tiny brewery and have come to the question of fermentors. I've read here on these forums about many places having good success with plastic and its cost savings, but I have to wonder ( read worry) about temp control problems with larger vessels.

We are hoping to use plastic conicals in a cold room ( probably 60 degrees or so) that will have fans circulating the cold air.

The problem as I see it however, is that as fermentor size increases, its surface area to volume ratio becomes progressively worse and at some given size the cold room approach won't be reliable for controlling fermentation temps, especially with the poor heat transfer properties of plastic.

The real question is how big can you go on plastic conicals before cold room cooling is no longer viable? 5 barrel? 10? 15?

Any feedback or experience here would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dean

[ChesterBrew]

This thread may be of help...

http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?26572-Plastic-Fermenter-setup

Personally at some point (probably 10bbl) I'd plan to use SS coils filled with recirculating glycol to assist with fermentation temps.

[DeaninMilwaukee]

Why was this thread moved?

Not really sure why this post got moved to this forum as its not a refrigeration question. Moderator, could you please move it back? It has received nearly zero views since the move.

[admin]

thread move

Not really sure why this post got moved to this forum as its not a refrigeration question. Moderator, could you please move it back? It has received nearly zero views since the move.

Where was it?

[Junkyard]

My business partner and I are working on our business plan for our tiny brewery and have come to the question of fermentors. I've read here on these forums about many places having good success with plastic and its cost savings, but I have to wonder ( read worry) about temp control problems with larger vessels.

We are hoping to use plastic conicals in a cold room ( probably 60 degrees or so) that will have fans circulating the cold air.

The problem as I see it however, is that as fermentor size increases, its surface area to volume ratio becomes progressively worse and at some given size the cold room approach won't be reliable for controlling fermentation temps, especially with the poor heat transfer properties of plastic.

The real question is how big can you go on plastic conicals before cold room cooling is no longer viable? 5 barrel? 10? 15?

Any feedback or experience here would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dean

Personally I wouldn't trust a cold room to cool your plastic fermenters at all. Having direct conduction is your best bet. Not only is it a more superior method of temperature control, but it is also cheaper. A stainless coil is the method we chose and it works great (could easily lager, maintains temps to the .1 degree) also takes up less space.

[DeaninMilwaukee]

Where was it?

It was in Stupid stuff Q&A: http://discussions.probrewer.com/for...-Stuff-Q-amp-A

[DeaninMilwaukee]

Personally I wouldn't trust a cold room to cool your plastic fermenters at all. Having direct conduction is your best bet. Not only is it a more superior method of temperature control, but it is also cheaper. A stainless coil is the method we chose and it works great (could easily lager, maintains temps to the .1 degree) also takes up less space.

Cheaper? We were looking at a simple A/C unit and a Coolbot in a homemade coldroom. Doesn't your method require a chiller?

[Junkyard]

Cheaper? We were looking at a simple A/C unit and a Coolbot in a homemade coldroom. Doesn't your method require a chiller?

in my opinion, Cool bots are also a waste of money. if you are going to temp control an A/C unit you should just buy a temperature controller. You can get a nice ranco for $60 and you can get the Chinese ones for $25. Is there an advantage to a coolbot i dont know about??


With my method of cooling fermenters, yes, you could use a glycol chiller. However it definitely does not require using one.
Fundamentally, all you really need is a cold liquid to circulate through the coil. this can be achieved many different ways.
the method we chose was to make our own chiller from an air conditioner. it costed about $175 all said and done.
we can control the temp on each of our fermenters individually using a few aquarium pumps wired into their own temperature controller, instead of having to buy air conditioners for each fermenter cabinet.


It might not be something your willing to mess with, but Since you said you guys are small and using plastic fermenters i figured you would be into saving money.

[DeaninMilwaukee]

The coolbot bypasses the frozen up coil problem you get on A/C units when you try to go colder than 60 degrees. It has a freeze sensor that mounts to the coil and shuts down the compressor when needed to avoid icing. This allows you to get down near freezing temps if desired with no ice up.

[Junkyard]

The coolbot bypasses the frozen up coil problem you get on A/C units when you try to go colder than 60 degrees. It has a freeze sensor that mounts to the coil and shuts down the compressor when needed to avoid icing. This allows you to get down near freezing temps if desired with no ice up.

Ah i see, good to know. That's definitely a worthwhile advantage.