Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Chilling in the Tropics

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Chilling in the Tropics

    We recently started a nano in South East Asia (1-barrel brewery with three, one barrel fermenters) and 6 brews in things are largely going well. I’ll write another post on our experiences soon, it has been an education setting up an operation in a country which has zero brewing supplies.

    One thing which is giving is constant grief is the temperature of our groundwater. I’ve just measured the tap temperatures and they’re registering as 29C (outside tap) and 28C (Inside tap). This is unsurprisingly making chilling our wort a complete headache. I’ve read countless posts on various techniques to get the temperature down but while some of them may work on a 5 gallon batch, cooling at this scale is something else. We’ve tried copper tubing in an ice bath (36 feet dropped the temperature a couple of degrees but nowhere near enough) and running the chilling water through a trough filled with ice bottles (periodically dropped the wort temperature to around 28C but the ice melts far too quickly to make it feasible solution). Thus far we have had to make do with cooling the wort as far as it will go (generally early 30’s at the moment but this wastes a huge amount of water) then cooling down to 22C in the fermentation chamber (3-birth refrigerator) and pitching the following day.

    This has resulted in good beers so far (the stout and British Bitter in particular have been superb) but I suspect the poor chilling is one of the factors in our hazy end product (not to mention any further risk of infection during the waiting time). After 4 weeks at crash temps (3C) they’re presentable but still very hazy. We’re not looking for crystal clear (our customers say they actually like the slight haze) but we would really like to get our production times down. Gelatin has had no observable effect on any of the beers we’ve tried it on. It’s not chill haze (appears even when warm) and it’s not starch haze (I periodically conduct starch tests following the mash to confirm full conversion).

    So, a couple of questions;

    Is there anything at all we can do to significantly drop our water temperatures pre-chill? We have a counterflow chiller and a chest freezer at our disposal. I’m considering putting a copper pre-chilling coil in a bucket of saline water and freezing the whole thing. Would this sufficiently drop our water temperature?

    Is there anything else we can be doing to avoid cloudiness or drop our beers quicker? I’ve put wort samples in the fridge before the yeast is cast and once chilled the wort appears crystal clear with large amounts of jello-like suspended clumps (I’m presuming cold break material). We use a counterflow chiller so this currently ends up in the fermenter.

    Thanks in advance!

  • #2
    About makeshift systems

    Why are you attempting to reinvent the wheel?
    Building up heat exchange systems without regard for convention, practice, or the math of thermodynamics generally makes for a system that does not perform.
    How about build a bona fide cold liquor system and use a chiller.
    Warren Turner
    Industrial Engineering Technician
    HVACR-Electrical Systems Specialist
    Moab Brewery
    The Thought Police are Attempting to Suppress Free Speech and Sugar coat everything. This is both Cowardice and Treason given to their own kind.

    Comment


    • #3
      On the cheap; buy a 60 gallon roto mold inductor tank and stick it inside your walk in cooler. Then you'll have cold liquor ready for you.

      Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

      Comment


      • #4
        Thanks the responses guys. Apologies, just read my post and realise I wasn't clear. We're using a counterflow chiller already, my comments were just about pre-chillers. We have to be makeshift where we are, if we weren't we wouldn't have made it this far already in this country.

        Foestauf, that's exactly another method I've been considering and will probably test on our next brew day. Unfortunately it's not a full solution unless we buy a new fridge for the rotomould. We don't have a walk in chiller just a three birth fridge. We can chill the water for the first batch but for subsequent batches it will already be in use as a fermentation chamber.

        Comment


        • #5
          fermentation Temp?

          How are you controling fermentation temps?

          s

          Comment


          • #6
            Assumption:
            You do not have a glycol chiller for your FVs? If you do, just use a heat exchanger on the incoming water supply to knock the temp down.

            Your 36' coil is not very long for a barrel of boiling wort. What diameter is the copper coil? If you have a walkin cooler, like foestauf stated, add a couple 55 gallon plastic drums in the cooler, chill water in them a couple days ahead of time to make sure it is down to the cooler temp. Recirc that water thru your coil or heat exchanger with a pump. Pump size matters, diameter of hoses and tubing matters, surface area matters.
            Joel Halbleib
            Partner / Zymurgist
            Hive and Barrel Meadery
            6302 Old La Grange Rd
            Crestwood, KY
            www.hiveandbarrel.com

            Comment


            • #7
              you really need to invest in some cooling. you should be able to source some stuff from china pretty cheap, try alibaba. get yourself a new compressor/condensor unit and then you can DIY the rest. scavenge an evaporator or preferably a heat exchanger. some copper welding, some refrigerant gas, some power and then you've got cooling. real cooling.

              if thats not in the budget then there's alot of guys who take AC units and extend the coils so they fit in a big igloo cooler. they're basically making a DIY glycol setup. one pump to move the water around, one pump to run it to your exchanger and back. AC units chilling the water. get your hands on a few cheap AC units, wire them up and get to cooling.

              lots of examples online you can view i'd think.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by brain medicine View Post
                you really need to invest in some cooling. you should be able to source some stuff from china pretty cheap, try alibaba. get yourself a new compressor/condensor unit and then you can DIY the rest. scavenge an evaporator or preferably a heat exchanger. some copper welding, some refrigerant gas, some power and then you've got cooling. real cooling.

                if thats not in the budget then there's alot of guys who take AC units and extend the coils so they fit in a big igloo cooler. they're basically making a DIY glycol setup. one pump to move the water around, one pump to run it to your exchanger and back. AC units chilling the water. get your hands on a few cheap AC units, wire them up and get to cooling.

                lots of examples online you can view i'd think.
                Hi, I also have 1.5bb in SE Asia. Tap temps are 29C. The only solution I found was to by a glycol chiller. I run a 2hp compressor that chills 250L tank 30% alcohol. I have a 2 stage heat exchanger but 1 stage is enough. I can cool 150L from 100c to 17c in a single pass over 20 minutes. The same system cools the fermenters.


                Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

                Comment


                • #9
                  Thanks for the responses guys. We've managed to operate to date by running wort back through the HERMS coil after filling the HLT with ice water from a chest freezer. Bit of a pain but we've produced 30BBL's or so of great beer off that so far. We use Speidel HDPE barrels in a climate controlled chamber for fermentation, does the job and very cheap to add more barrels.

                  Potentially expanding a bit now so looking at more options for the wort cooling. Either a condenser or glycol setup will be in order. Wildman, are you pumping the glycol solution through a separate heat exchanger? If so, what are you using as the heat exchanger? Plate chiller, coil etc. Know a few guys over here who have great things to say about the brewing scene over in the Philippines, will have to get over there again sometime!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Fellow tropics brewer here - different hemisphere. Our temps are about the same, and the struggle is real.

                    We have a glycol system for our 4 7BBL uni's, and we added a drop for an inexpensive homebrew heat exchanger. Our glycol cools the groundwater to about 15, which then cools the kettle. It's important to limit the flow of groundwater through the exchanger to allow for maximum cooling. Then, if we can get the kettle to around 60 or 50, we generally transfer to the unitank prechilled to near 0. Since we have to double batch, we'll allow the first batch to chill out towards freezing while we cook the second. Once we chill the second to near 50 after the boil and add to the fermenter, we're almost at the perfect pitching temp.

                    THis allows us to not stress the glycol system too much while maintaining crashing temps in the other tanks.

                    We have a 1000L tank in the cold room and a 1HP pump that is just waiting to be hooked up. A proper cold liquor tank is a much more elegant solution. I look forward to this.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X