New Setup for Glycol Tank + Pump

could you (both?) also explain your setup?
i am also building a glycol setup so at this point I have

fridge with glycol reservoir
ss brewtech 14 gallon chronical
heating pad

i need to have brewpi control my pump to pump glycol when needed, and enable the heater when needed.

I just had a new idea:

By implementing that, BrewPi can control the glycol with just a beer sensor and no fridge sensor. It is a quick temporary solution until we have independent and configurable control loops.

Ok so my setup consists of the following:

Window AC unit with coils submerged in Glycol holding tank
Cooler cut and converted to holding tank
ITC-1000 used to control Glycol temps
Three submersible pumps (2 recirculate Glycol in tank, 1 pumps Glycol to fermenter)
Old Arduino BrewPi running the cooling pump/recirc pumps

I live in central Texas so no need for heat, mother nature provides ample. I put the beer in the thermo and the fridge attached to the side of the conical and am able to run pretty well, but even this isn’t perfect.

Cheers,
-Stephen

I love this idea! I’m glad I’ve been slacking this week on my plans. Tomorrow I was going to give into letting brewpi control the glycol temp even though that meant only one fermenter!

I even managed to get two brewpis controlled by one raspberry pi using the auto install scripts and used symbolic links to share the ferment data so I can see what has been brewed on either brew pi on either webpage.

I’m getting excited! So thankful for all the work you guys have been doing!

but do you want to have BrewPi control the glycol temp or the pump for the glycol?
I think of this thing controller the pump for the glycol, and have the glycol temp as cold as possible…

looking for input

Depending on how your chiller is going to chill the vessel you will find you have to adjust things a decent bit on the cold side. I have two 1/2bbl SSBrewtech conicals with the FTSs coils in them and we found that if I super chilled my glycol I would bounce all over the place (overshoot was really bad). I had to dial back the glycol temp greatly to get things in line because the coils chilled almost too well.

Cheers,
-Stephen

hmm… i have 2 14 gallon brewmaster editions and plan to run glycol at -20 celsius through them… would that be too cold?

Depending on what you are trying to ferment that will probably be way too cold.

i’m thinking of having brewpi control the pump, then only let the glycol circulate when i need it to cool down.

I run my glycol at 40F most of the time. thats more than sufficient for fermentation temps. Just kegged a beer today that spent last week at 50F waiting on me to get to it, and had no problems maintaining the temp. Of course 40F also because I just haven’t gotten around to actually adding glycol to the glycol mixture and I get freezing on the coils with plain water at around a 36F set point.

I’ll have a test setup for glycol soon :smiley:
New conical just arrived.

Still have to convert my glass door freezer into a fridge + kegerator + glycol chiller :laughing:

Ordered 2 perlick 650ss taps and secondary CO2 regulators.

I’m going to use a steel jerrycan as glycol reservoir.

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1BBL Brewmaster edition , nice;)

Nope, that’s the 14G.

Ok. Was confused because only the 1BBL version comes with that perforated plate between the legs. Forgot it can be ordered extra;)

Are you planning on doing the coils on the side?

Yeah, the Brew Master Edition comes with the coils. I’ve got the same one, but didn’t go all out and get the shelf, leg extensions AND casters. WOWZA! That’s nice.

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Ahh very nice I haven’t looked at this series much since I got mine so long ago.

they are incredibly nice…
not just the butterfly valves, but also the heating pad, you can almost directly shove the new temp sensors in, the build in cooling spiral…
i also odered the leg extensions, wheels and stainless steel shelve… they are awesome…

Expecting mine on Friday. I hope the heating-pad from the FTS kit can be used in combo with a brewpi.

Multiple-loops support is going to be very used as I will need it now for both mashing and fermenting…

I got 3 new 150 liter conicals comming in next weekend from china. The isolation and cooling jacket are built in, the are pressure resistandtto 3 bar and got CIP cleaning:


I am wishfully waiting for the glycol-setup-update, and especially multichamber-support-update.