Small Fermentation Chamber attached to Cold Box

[djhooper527]

We have a small 10 gallon pilot system and would like to build a fermentation chamber to control the fermentation of our pilot batches. I was thinking about using some of our extra panels from the cold box to build a smaller chamber which would be connected to the cold box. I would use some insulated air duct and some small fans to cycle air from the cold box through the fermentation chamber.

To break it down, I would have two ducts and four fans total connecting the cold box and fermentation chamber. On each line there would be a fan on the inside of the cold box as well as the fermentation chamber. One line would blow the cold air in while the other returned warm air to the cold box. The fans would be connected to a cheap temperature controller which would only turn them on when the temperature gets too warm.

If you could share you opinions or any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it.

Cheers

[feinbera]

Yay, one I can answer!

This exact technique has been successfully employed by homebrewers for years (well, almost exact... the heat sink is usually a couple frozen half-gallon bottles of water, not their brewery's coldroom). Make sure your fermentor has a thermowell – or, at least, sandwich the temp controller's probe between the fermentor wall and a good thickness of insulation – and you should be good to go. Even though air is a horrible thermal conductor compared with water/glycol/etc, it'll still be good enough to keep the small volume of beer you're talking about under control.