Home of the BrewNosers

Has anyone explored this?

I'm kind of tight for space and am having trouble finding a chest freezer that is low to the ground and will hold 2 buckets/carboys.
I have ample room under my work bench for a custom plywood/foam chamber and could build it pretty easily.

Mainly just trying to figure out the best way to cool it down a bit. The room in the summer is ~23*C, so I don't need an incredible amount of cooling to hit 15-16*C.
Anyone have experience with peltier coolers? Or any other suggestion for cooling ~10*c without interchanging ice packs or something?

I'm intrested in the same if you find anything let me know. Otherwise you could just keep some 2L pop bottle of H2O in the freezer and swap them into the cooler every day or so.

I had thought about a 7 gal insulated bucket with water to "ballance the temp on a carboy.

Sandy

IIRC, morebeer uses them on their temp controlled conicals.

I think I'm just going to go for it. Doesn't seem like a stretch to get down to 16*C from room temp. Peltiers are pretty cheap anyway.

Just need to come up with a good way to mount the Peltier into the foam and keep the hot side heatsink out of the way.

Do you plan to lager at 16c? That's pretty high....

Where are you getting the Peltier?

Sandy

mr x wrote:Do you plan to lager at 16c? That's pretty high....

Primary ale fermentation around 16*C should land me at around 18*C in the middle of the beer, which is right where i want.

No lagering.

GAM wrote:Where are you getting the Peltier?

Sandy

Ebay if I get one - now toying with the idea of wiring my shed for electricity and using a freezer for simplicity and flexibilities sake.

My only constraint and reasoning for the custom chamber was space - If i can make space, I can use a freezer and save time (and probably money).

If you can source at a good price we may do a group buy.

Sandy

Ryan, what did you end up doing? I'm debating the Peltier option, mostly because it seems like a fun project.

Looks interesting...

http://conical-fermenter.com/wp-content ... wnload.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/TEC1-12706-Therm ... 565c578f14" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2-PCS-TEC1-12706 ... 5d44d1b363" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Group buy for experiments?

Sandy

I'd be up for trying it

I've got a chamber matching this description. I'll get some pictures for you this evening. It's convection cooled using a computer fan, a thermostat and foam/ice.

jtmwhyte wrote:I've got a chamber matching this description. I'll get some pictures for you this evening. It's convection cooled using a computer fan, a thermostat and foam/ice.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk 4

GAM wrote:http://www.ebay.ca/itm/TEC1-12706-Therm ... 565c578f14
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2-PCS-TEC1-12706 ... 5d44d1b363" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Group buy for experiments?

Sandy

Sandy, I don't think those units are powerful enough. I made a contraption, pictured below, with a much bigger unit and it was still no good in the end for my 12 gal ferment. You are welcome to have it, next time you are up this way.

Here’s an “exciting” video of a small thermo-electric cooler freezing a drop of water. It takes forever.





Those water coolers like the one pictured below have large peltier units, so if you found an old one of those, it might be worth playing with, but still probably wouldn’t be powerful enough to do the job.

Actually, come to think of it…I saw another big unit online that was used in the telecom industry

I had thought of the water cooler. May revisit it. The peltier may require 2, 3, 4 or more. I don't need much temp drop so it may still be an option.

I have never seen a peltier in the Telco, I'll ask around.

Sandy

I need about 5 degrees in the summer and two in the winter to keep my cold room at 17 think they would be a viable solution?

The thing with peltiers is they're incredibly inefficient. They are handy because they don't take up much space. The article X posted is pretty neat though. I would certainly consider doing that if I buy a conical.


Sent from a rotary telephone using taps talk

My basement is usually around 18C and I'm happy with my results but sometimes I put the carboy in a larger bucket and put both in my laundry sink. I put my cold water hose down inside the bucket and just set the valve so there is always a continuos trickle of cold well water (9C ish) being introduced into the bottom of the bucket. Warm water rises and flows over top of bucket down into the sink and down the drain. Drop in a floating thermometer and adjust your flow accordingly. It uses a fair bit of water but I usually only run it for the first 4 days during peek fermentation. Cheap and easy.