Can I redneck a glycol reservoir?

[mkirkland]

So I've taken over at a brewery with a rather underpowered glycol chiller with a negligible reservoir. It's effectively using all the tanks as a reservoir; if you crash one, a brite will start rising

Would it be insane to put some spray foam around an IBC tote, hook it into the loop, and use it as a redneck reservoir?

[plh]

Sure, but you may not have enough BTU cooling power in the refrigeration unit.

[dick murton]

Sorry, but if you want to cool at a certain rate, then your chiller is best to be suitable chilling capacity for peak load, OR you install two glycol tanks, and the "warm" glycol from the FVs / BBTs etc passes into a warm glycol tank. The glycol from here needs then to be chilled on passage to a separate cold glycol tank. The two tanks will have to be large enough to buffer the peak loads. A bit of maths required to size everything correctly. This sort of setup works OK for short peak periods, but would need to be pretty large to cope with a small chiller and large peak load. You won't need to fill both tanks with glycol of course.