Stratified fermentation: Options?

[CharlosCarlies]

I posted a thread a while back where we were having an issue crashing our tanks when single batching into our double-sized fermentors because of a gap in cooling between the upper and lower jackets. Regular fermentation seemed to be fine, but all of a sudden we're running into some serious issues. I come in today and one of the beers is 5F above the set-point and still rising. When I checked the thermowell in the cone, the beer is below 40F because the tank has been continuously calling for glycol and only the cone jacket touches the beer.

No idea how this is going to affect this particular beer, and in the future we just won't single batch into these tanks; however, what are our best options now given it's 3 days into fermentation? I was thinking of just killing the cooling completely and letting it free-rise, but it's 90F+ right now and I have no idea how Cali ale will respond to this. I also don't like the idea of half the beer being at a drastically different temp, so I'm kinda at a loss here.

Cheers and much thanks in advance for any opinions!

[Wayne1]

I posted a thread a while back where we were having an issue crashing our tanks when single batching into our double-sized fermentors because of a gap in cooling between the upper and lower jackets. Regular fermentation seemed to be fine, but all of a sudden we're running into some serious issues. I come in today and one of the beers is 5F above the set-point and still rising. When I checked the thermowell in the cone, the beer is below 40F because the tank has been continuously calling for glycol and only the cone jacket touches the beer.

No idea how this is going to affect this particular beer, and in the future we just won't single batch into these tanks; however, what are our best options now given it's 3 days into fermentation? I was thinking of just killing the cooling completely and letting it free-rise, but it's 90F+ right now and I have no idea how Cali ale will respond to this. I also don't like the idea of half the beer being at a drastically different temp, so I'm kinda at a loss here.

Cheers and much thanks in advance for any opinions!

If you have multiple thermowells, the RTD should be placed in the lowest well so it will always be in the beer. It will work just fine for single batch or double batch in the lowest thermowell.

When single batching, you should turn off the flow to the top jackets. I do this by having a simple shut off valve installed in the glycol line running to the top jacket. An alternative would be to use a separate temp controller for each jacket so you can always tell what is going on in the tank.

At 40F the yeast may have gone dormant. If you have an empty tank, you can run hot water through the tank as a CIP to heat up the entire tank and then transfer the cold beer into it. This may raise the temp of the beer enough to get the yeast working again. Otherwise you may have to disconnect the cold fermenter from the glycol system and run hot water through the jacket.

Most tanks are very well insulated and the thermal mass of the beer is such that even with 90F ambient temps, it would take a very long time for the beer to free rise.