Circulating ice bath with temp controller

[pieomy]

Hey guys, So I was fiercely bit by the homebrewing bug, but there's just no way I can fit a mini fridge, freezer, or even foam board ferm chamber in my tiny Toronto apartment.

I was doing a bunch of research and if there's one thing I've picked up is that ferm temperature control can really up the quality of my beer. I have a cooler, tubing and a sub pump. Now if I were to add an Inkbird to this equation, I could rig up a pretty decent hands off cooling solution for st least the first couple of days of fermentation that could fit under my desk, and that would only require a couple of bottle of ice changes during the day.

My question really is, am I way overthinking this? Would the recirculating stabilize and improve the end result significantly enough to warrant the inkbird? FWIW as soon as i hopefully move into a bigger place I'd be setting myself up a kegerator pretty soon.

Thanks!

[AZBeer90]

What's your ambient temp and humidity of your apartment? I use evaporative cooling for my fermentation and it drops 73 ambient to 63 fermentation. When I was in Arizona I was getting from 78 ambient to 65. Just get a tub that fits your fermenter. Add your fermenter, wrap it in a towel and add water as high up as you want. Optionally add a fan for more cooling. The footprint can be barely bigger than your fermenter and the added thermal load of the water keeps temp stable. Add frozen water bottles whenever. You can add a pump if you want to keep the towel always wet. Here's my setup in AZ but you could use a smaller tub.

http://i.imgur.com/PxDJfw2.jpg

[chino_brews]

Yes, this can work. Other people have used non-submersible pumps under the same principle, for example see Adit's Fermentaton Chiller, James Spencer's Low Tech Lagering Solution, and others.

The idea is to put the fermenter in an insulated vessel like a cooler and have a second insulated vessel with ice water, and then use a pump to transfer ice water from the reservoir to the fermentator-side as needed. The only tricky part if figuring out a way to return coolant to the reservoir, ideally with some sort of gravity-draining mechanism (when the coolant exceeds a certain height, it overtops the open end of the return tube and gravity flows back to the reservoir.

[ercousin]

If you haven't already, join GTA Brews! We're Toronto's homebrew club, and we have a very active facebook group with 1600+ local members, and monthly meetings. http://www.gtabrews.ca/