Planning to move from my old cooler fridge to a new glycol setup for my fermenters.
Seems there are new glycol for homebrewers on the market as Blichmann, SS Brewtech, Penguin, Brewbuilt and so on.
Any advice on what glycol has worked the best with Brewblox?
I use a Lindr AS-80 for my cooling water.
It is beer line chiller, and costs about half of what most glycol chillers cost.
I usually keep it at 2 degrees, so I don’t need glycol. Glycol is a pain when you spill it and water works just fine.
Two 12v pumps pump cold water through the coil in my conical and my brite tank.
We made these boards to be a drop in replacement for the Ss Brewtrech FTSS (in combination with a Spark).
For my conical and it takes about 10s of pumping every 10 minutes to maintain a steady temp. More when cold crashing of course. Cooling with liquid is very powerful. Temp controllers like the inkbird don’t work well because they turn on for too long before the measurement registers a temperature drop.
As an added bonus, this chiller has 2 or 4 coils to cool my tap lines. That what it was designed for.
It has an integrated python pump, which is used to pump cool water around the beer lines going to the taps. I later made a bracket to hold the python:
The python just has a U fitting at the taps to return the cold water:
It really doesn’t matter I think. Your glycol/water chiller provides cool water. Brewblox just controls the small pump that uses a bit of that cooling water.
Do you also use this for running through the cold side of your chiller to cool the wort or just cold tap water?
No, I use a CFC with tap water first.
But this could do the last 10 degrees, which are slow if you are getting close to the tap water temperature.
Just pumping into the fermenter a bit too hot, then use the normal temperature control to bring it down to target quickly is easier. Less sanitizing to worry about.
Yeah that last 10°C or so takes a long time to chill with tap water and trying to cool that last bit in a fridge is also slow. Was thinking about glycol options.
I’m happy with my Penguin. Just took a few weeks to get. There’s been some complaints about the new MoreBeer line and SS Brewtech service (i.e. no parts available) so be sure to look into those issues before jumping in.
Hi there,
I would like to dig up that old topic because i would like to get advice for the choice of a cooling system for a fermenter up to 70L batches (unitank like, with a cooling jacket).
I really like the beer tap coolers compared to the overpriced glycol chillers, but i can’t really choose between the typical AS-40 or AS-80 models from Lindr.
There will be no other affectation than the fermenter for the cooler.
No doubt that the lighter model will be able to handle femrenting, but will it cold crash ?
Thanks !
I have the AS-80, which I use for my taps and for my SS brewtech 50L conical fermenter.
It doesn’t run anywhere near full power during cold crash, at least not when the beer has reached the target temperature. However, the larger size gives you more buffer to speed up the initial crash. This can be helpful if you want to bring down the beer the last few degrees before pitching, instead of waiting on the counterflow chiller.
Alright thanks for your input !
The AS-80 will definitely get me on the safe side. Not using taps right now but could get usefull if i want to in the future for special gatherings or something
