OK Amigos, so here is the idea floating around in my head, and I wanted to run it by the jury here.
So the idea… I build a 4 tap Keezer, but also add a (in / out) for hose to connect to my fermzilla. The idea is I would have a bucket of water being chilled by the keezer with a pump in it.. the pump pushes water controlled by my rapt temp controller to my fermzilla (which will have a insulation jacket) and also insulation on the hoses. Then warmer water return to the bucket in the Keezer. I would only be fermenting one batch at a time.
Does this setup make sense, because I don’t see anyone else using it… Also I don’t see the return water really heating up the keezer fast enough to impact the keg temperatures, but would love to hear your thoughts.
PS thank you Chat GPT for generating the image, otherwise you would be having to look at my stick men diagrams.
I’m figuring this may be the best way for me to optimize space in the house (aka wife acceptance factor) and allow me to both dispense and have decent temp control…
If the ambient temperature of the fermzilla isn’t too far off from the target temperature you might be alright. You would be surprised how with constant circulation you probably couldn’t chill the liquid fast enough. Worth a shot though if you already have what you need.
Your design makes sense to me but I think Terry is correct in pointing our the risk that the water reservoir might not have enough thermal energy to keep your fermentation in it’s ideal temperature range. It’ll depend on the volume of the reservoir and the temperature difference between the keezer, the fermentation vessel and the ambient temperature of the room. These types of setups often use glycol instead of water to compensate for this kind of thing.
I don’t have the engineering know how to calculate this kind of thing. If there isn’t someone else on the forum that does, then you can always pose the question to your AI chatbot of choice.
This is todays setup, instead of a chest freezer I have a cooler box with a pale of water in it with the pump, and I swap out frozen water bottles twice a day to get the temps down. I’m usually able to get it down to about 12C, but should be able to improve that if I better insulated the hose and possibly used a larger resevoir, even this was a proof of concept to see what’s possible and have stuck with it for a few brews now.
I don’t have the chest freezer yet, at this stage I’m still kicking around ideas, trying to optimize space and minimize the amount of equipment. If I can find a second hand cheap chest freezer perhaps I’ll try building a proof of concept in the shed and see how it goes.
Denis is right, so long as the shelves are removable. Many upright fridges run the coolant coils through the shelves.
I use a repurposed wine fridge with an external temp controler. Works like a charm for fermentation and I can use it to keep kegs etc. cold in between batches.
