[wiley]

Welp -- looks like the next project landed on my doorstep today...

[narcout]

What are you building?

[wiley]

It's a control enclosure for a BCS-462 to control fermentation temperatures. I'll post pictures of the finished product (hopefully soon) -- I've been fighting with the SSRs, but I think it might have been self-imposed due to some of the "features" of my design 

Meh

[Thirsty_Monk]

Looking interesting.

[wiley]

Voila!

Got the control box put together... She may not be the prettiest, but she's definitely effective! (I feel like that's been said before in other contexts  )

The box






All hooked up

[Thirsty_Monk]

How did I miss the pictures.

Looking good.

[tomsawyer]

Holy crap, how big are those fermentors?  They looked jacketed?

[wiley]

Holy crap, how big are those fermentors?  They looked jacketed?

Those are 7 BBL FVs. Jacketed, insulated, and temp controlled with the BCS 462. The galvanized enclosure you see sitting next to the FVs with the PVC piping is the glycol chiller keeping things cool.

Hoping someday soon to make it to the big leagues -- time and money, right?

[punatic]

Guess you blew the doors off of your 200 gal/yr/household limit, ay?   

[phillamb168]

Did you buy the glycol power pack or make it yourself? I've only seen one guy who's made his own chilling unit out of an old AC, otherwise they cost between 2 and 10 grand.

[wiley]

Guess you blew the doors off of your 200 gal/yr/household limit, ay?   

While the FVs may be 7 BBLs, I never said I filled them to the brim! However, it may be a good thing that my record keeping skills (in terms of volume brewed) are intentionally lacking at this point...

Did you buy the glycol power pack or make it yourself? I've only seen one guy who's made his own chilling unit out of an old AC, otherwise they cost between 2 and 10 grand.

I purchased this unit from Pro Refrigeration. You could DIY, but IME it was worth buying something that I knew wouldn't cause me headaches down the road. I think the "Cold Bot" (http://storeitcold.com/) has been discussed on this forum before - I considered adapting this for fermentation temperature control purposes, but it didn't make as much sense as getting a small pro unit for my long term plan.

Caution: Brewing in Denver pieced together a glycol chiller out of an old 10 HL grundy, a compressor, condensor, pump and heat exchanger. I've seen it done before, but it wasn't the best solution for me. On the other hand, you can get a line chiller (Micromatic, Foxx and the like) for under $2k, but the capacity of those types of units is pretty limited.