How do you warm up a cold fermentor?

[rafters_brewer]

I made an IPA yesterday, set the thermostat for 69 degrees and went home. Came in today and found that the solenoid valve for the glycol got stuck open during the night so now my fermentor is 30 degrees. Does anyone have a good way to heat the fermentor back up? In the past I have used a propane heater and an aluminum heat shield wrapped around the cone to warm things back up but I'm looking for a better solution...

Thanks!

[nwcw2001]

pump your sparge water into it and sparge from there. Or just fill it full of water from your HLT or Kettle.

John

[Gansett]

Ipa

I made an IPA yesterday, set the thermostat for 69 degrees and went home. Came in today and found that the solenoid valve for the glycol got stuck open during the night so now my fermentor is 30 degrees. Does anyone have a good way to heat the fermentor back up? In the past I have used a propane heater and an aluminum heat shield wrapped around the cone to warm things back up but I'm looking for a better solution...

Thanks!

Circulate the IPA thu your heat exchanger. Using 100 degree water on the chilled water side. Besure you clear the yeast from the bottom.

[beertje46]

First figure out why the solenoid stuck and make repairs

Fill an empty fermenter with hot water; up-stream from the cold uni if possible, close all glycol solenoids except the tank you are trying to warm-up and the hot water unitank. This will bring up the temp but will tax the hell out of your chiller. If you can turn off the chiller compressor while still running the circulation pump it shouldn't be to bad. Just remember to turn the compressor back on and cool down before re-energizing the closed solenoids.

Good luck!

[shiva]

if you have a glycol heat exchanger turn off all other tanks and compressor then heat up glycol and then run it to your tank should heat up quickly otherwise you can hook up hot water to the top of tank and let it runn till desired temp.

Cheers,

Doug

[rafters_brewer]

Thanks for the recommendations fellas. I think I will try to recirc thru the heat exchanger, although everything is hard piped, so that might take some work. Everything cold in the brewery runs off the same glycol, so warming up the whole system sounds like trouble, but I will consider that my second option. My last resort will be transferring to a 'hot' fermentor...

Thanks again guys, hopefully you've saved my ass yet again...

[Jephro]

I had the same problem once. I disconnected the glycol lines from the fermenter and drained the glycol from the jackets into buckets. I then just hooked up hoses from the kettle to the jackets and pumped 85 degree water through the jackets until it brought up my temp.
Gentle and easy if you have clamps on the hoses near the fermenter.

Jeff

[liammckenna]

Moving the beer is always a drastic solution.

Have tried the following method on two occasions with great success. Avoids taxing the hell out of your cooling system

1/ isolate tank from glycol supply and return headers (hopefully you have valves allowing you to do this.

2/ disconnect tank from headers. recapture as much glycol as possible. For us it was easy. The isolation valves were close to the header and the drops to the tanks were in braided poly which allowed easy drainage into a couple of buckets. Surprisingly little glycol volume actually in the jackets.

3/ connect hot later line to now disconnected glycol line. continue to push water up through jacket until desired temp is reached. gauge flow by temp of water coming out the other end. Should be just warm at exit temp.

4/ reconnect glycol headers. Return captured glycol to reservoir.

In both of these instances, solenoid failure was caused by bits of ptfe tape in the actuator, between the diaphragm and the valve body, not the solenoid itself. Be careful sealing your joints.

Pax.

Liam

[Sir Brewsalot]

Maybe this bird has flown, but if you've got a mean of turning off your glycol chiller's compressor and just run the pump, you're all set. Moving the beer is a dodgy prospect I think...

Fill an empty tank with near boiling water, manually valve off all other tanks except these two, and run the pump until the temp comes up.

I do this with a long fermenting Barleywine that I'm fermenting in a very cold brewery, where I need to yeast to do a bit more work for me. Works like a charm.

Cheers,
S

[lhall]

Don't move the beer through the heat exchanger. I did that once and for some reason the yeast in the beer refused to flocculate properly afterwards, made for a horrible filter. I'd go with the other suggestions.

We had similar problems with our solenoids. We were using ASCO Red Hat valves that had a 5 psi pressure differential rating to work properly. They would continuously stay open, or not open at all. I switched to an ASCO valve that did not require a pressure differential to operate, and have had no problems since. We got them from Grainger, part number 3UL19, about $140 each.

[Matthew Hill]

Future prevention to the problem

I'm not sure why every engineer plumbing a glycol system uses solenoid valves because they invariably jam at some point in their service life. Or the return spring fails.

Consider replacing your solenoid valves with motorized brass ball valves that power on and power off. Even the simplest controllers will run them.

-Matt

[Brew49411]

Consider replacing your solenoid valves with motorized brass ball valves that power on and power off. Even the simplest controllers will run them.

-Matt

Where can you find these. Grainger??

[Ted Briggs]

Ditto on hooking up a hot water hose to the glycol jacket. Easiest and less risk for the beer. If you have not reached TG you probably will have to pitch fresh yeast- don't o2 again though- crop off a high krusen (sp?) fermentation. Dumping the old "shocked" yeast and adding some yeast "food" (yeastX) might be a good idia too.

[rafters_brewer]

Thanks for all the advice guys... I ended up disconnecting the glycol lines and running hot water through the jacket. Sadly, I didn't have much hot water and I ran it through for a few hours and only saw a slight change in temperature. I went home disappointed and took the next day off. Returned the day after and the temperature was up to 74 and fermentation was running hard. I reconnected the glycol lines and am getting it back to 68. So after all that, I will probably have to dump the batch, but at least it was a good learning experience.

[Moonlight]

I found that if you just run warm water thru the jacket in a single pass, way too much heat still remains after traveling through the jacket and is wasted down the drain. If you have a huge temp differential between the beer and the hot water, it is probably not so great on the beer or yeast at the contact surface.

I have had good success with the following: I have a cut open keg I use for lautering with a tri-clover on the bottom, and I put warm water in this and let it circulate thru my 21bbl tank jacket until it is within 10 degrees of the tank temp, then dump that water and repeat with warm again. It's somewhat slow but saves on heat, is gentle on the beer, and if you go off and do something else while it is running, you don't run the risk of over-heating your beer.