SS Brewtech Issues

[yourlastchance89]

This post is both a review and inquiry into issues. So this is my set up here. First I must say that I love everything I've gotten from them so far. I only started brewing in December. Initially I was going to go the regular route with basic equipment, but I stumbled across the SS Brew Bucket thread on here, read Jamil Zainasheff's beginners advice on temp control, and decided to splurge on a quality fermenter with the FTSs Temp Controller. I don't think I'll ever buy anything but SS fermenters now. At the start of the semester in February I was fortunate enough to get some extra scholarship money so I threw down and got the SS Brewmaster Chronical, the FTTs temp controller, and the glycol chiller. They've both worked fairly great. Easy enough to set up, great customer service, and overall everything I've got from them has been aesthetically beautiful. I feel they're comparable to the Apple products of homebrewing. Great functioning and beautiful products, but I had some issues, mostly more associated to my own inexperience. The first was with the seal to the lid of the Chronical. It was far more of a pain in the ass to put in than the bucket. I knowingly put it on upside down thinking the clamps would still adequately seal it,they didn't. I noticed when cold crashing I had no signs of suck back in the balloon on the end of the blowoff. It shrunk but not to the point of being completely sealed which I attributed to the extra head space in the lid. 4 days later my pilsner wort rather than clear, turned more into an orange juice. It doesn't help that I attempted a partial mash with the stove top and oven and totally jacked it up. I fixed the seal and applied biofine, but my first question to those more experienced is if this beer is totally screwed due to that amount of time being exposed to oxygen? Also when and how many trub dumps should I be doing with a conical? I've done 3 thus far. The first was 24 hours after pitching, the second about 2 days into the cold crash to remove the trub plug, and I did another last night to remove as much yeast as possible.
My second issue and question deals with the glycol chiller. First off it works great at maintaining and cold crashing temps. I live in a 1 bedroom studio apartment. Our upstairs studio has pretty much been transformed into my little brew haven, and while a little noisy, the chamber virtually drowns out the whizzing temp pumps, it's not so noisy that it is ever distracting, and I like the background noise with me even knocking out a couple naps upstairs. The issue occurs in the lower temp ranges. It drops temps great till the 30s. With it and my wort chiller I get my wort temps down from 200F to 44F in right around 2 hours. My 10% ABV Tripel was cold crashed at 33 F for 5 days no problem. My 6% pilsner has only reached 33 F once, and the FTTs pump was constantly going till temps settled around 37 F and now it struggles to hold there. I searched the FAQs on the SS website and I found out that the chilling coil inside the fermenter can potentially ice up, and it will insulate it from the beer. It makes sense. My high alcohol Tripel chilled far easier, I've also kept the glycol temperature at about 26F which is constantly recirculating through the coils in the fermenter ,but I can't find this issue anywhere else online. Does anyone have any suggestions or workarounds to this? It now struggles to maintain at 37 F and I was hoping to cold crash a lager a bit lower. I've raised the glycol temp to 31F doing gradual temp step-downs for the fermenter. I even also shortened the lines by about 3 ft, and double insulated them with the hopes of raising the cooling efficiency, still nothing. Sorry for the long winded post. I just wanted to let anyone pondering brewing investments my experience, and see if any of you more salty brewers knew anything about my two issues. Is my lager ruined beyond repair or even being socially drinkable (I'm personally going to drink it no matter what)? And is there a solution to getting my glycol chiller to maintain fermenter temps in the lower 30s?

View attachment 1490582926374.jpg

 

[GJOCONNELL]

Are you using the glycol chiller to go from boil to 44 f? The glycol pack is not meant for that. Are you sure the water/glycol is flowing well? I would make sure the lines are providing the needed amount of flow.

I would then check the pumps to make sure all is well on that front. Also have you checked the FTS settings? Make sure your temp range is reasonable.

I run a similar setup and do not have the issues you are describing and the chiller works like a champ. Also what ratio of glycol to distilled water are you using?

Lots of things could be causing the issues you describe. It might be time to drain the reservoir and make sure to use only distilled water and a high grade glycol of the appropriate mixture. SS Brewtech has a FAQ which is useful.

 

[bleme]

I'd be surprised if your coils weren't frozen over inside, and that won't melt until you raise the temp up over 32F because the frozen part is nearly pure water now. Once it is liquid again, you can drop it a little but not 26F.

 

[GJOCONNELL]

I'd be surprised if your coils weren't frozen over inside, and that won't melt until you raise the temp up over 32F because the frozen part is nearly pure water now. Once it is liquid again, you can drop it a little but not 26F.

Mine can run @ 26 without any issue I suspect not enough glycol is present.

 

[yourlastchance89]

Mine can run @ 26 without any issue I suspect not enough glycol is present.

Do you straight cold crash to that temp or is it a gradual reduction? Also what percent brew are you doing?

I should also mention my chiller itself easily reaches 25 F with no coil freezing at all in the actual glycol chiller reservoir. It's the temperature of the actual brew that struggles. I initially cold crashed straight down with a chiller temp of 25 F thinking the colder the better. It worked at first but gradually struggled more and more. I my brew up to 44F and have kept the chiller 5-8 degrees below my set fermenter temp. I've managed to get get it back down to 33F over the course of today doing that.

 

[yourlastchance89]

Are you using the glycol chiller to go from boil to 44 f? The glycol pack is not meant for that. Are you sure the water/glycol is flowing well? I would make sure the lines are providing the needed amount of flow.

I would then check the pumps to make sure all is well on that front. Also have you checked the FTS settings? Make sure your temp range is reasonable.

I run a similar setup and do not have the issues you are describing and the chiller works like a champ. Also what ratio of glycol to distilled water are you using?

Lots of things could be causing the issues you describe. It might be time to drain the reservoir and make sure to use only distilled water and a high grade glycol of the appropriate mixture. SS Brewtech has a FAQ which is useful.

I use a wort chiller till around 80F. Then I dump and cool till 44F. My first time I did try to cool it from
100 F, but only because the SS website said that should be fine and there is a YouTube video of someone doing the exact same thing. I've scoured the FAQs and I am now genuinely thinking it's my chill lines in theater fermenter. My glycol reservoir has never iced ever and it reaches temps no problem, it is the internal temp of the fermenter that struggles. I used a gallon of pure propylene glycol(which I had to scour the Earth to be able to buy in store) to 3.15-3.25 gallons distilled water only to ensure the chiller coil was completely submerged which was impossible with only a straight 3:1 ratio.

Since I've posted this. I raised my temp to 42 F with my glycol chiller set to 7 degrees less than my temp no lower than 29 F. I've managed to chill my brew back down to 34F-35F which works fine for me.

 

[drksky]

I use a wort chiller till around 80F. Then I dump and cool till 44F. My first time I did try to cool it from
100 F, but only because the SS website said that should be fine and there is a YouTube video of someone doing the exact same thing. I've scoured the FAQs and I am now genuinely thinking it's my chill lines in theater fermenter. My glycol reservoir has never iced ever and it reaches temps no problem, it is the internal temp of the fermenter that struggles. I used a gallon of pure propylene glycol(which I had to scour the Earth to be able to buy in store) to 3.15-3.25 gallons distilled water only to ensure the chiller coil was completely submerged which was impossible with only a straight 3:1 ratio.

Since I've posted this. I raised my temp to 42 F with my glycol chiller set to 7 degrees less than my temp no lower than 29 F. I've managed to chill my brew back down to 34F-35F which works fine for me.

It's not the glycol chamber they're talking about icing, it's the FTSS coils in the fermenter. They're accumulating water ice frozen out of the beer and dampening the cooling effects. IOW, you're making Ice Bier.

 

[GJOCONNELL]

Do you straight cold crash to that temp or is it a gradual reduction? Also what percent brew are you doing?

I should also mention my chiller itself easily reaches 25 F with no coil freezing at all in the actual glycol chiller reservoir. It's the temperature of the actual brew that struggles. I initially cold crashed straight down with a chiller temp of 25 F thinking the colder the better. It worked at first but gradually struggled more and more. I my brew up to 44F and have kept the chiller 5-8 degrees below my set fermenter temp. I've managed to get get it back down to 33F over the course of today doing that.

The percent beers? The range is from 12-4.8% ABV. I don't generally run it down to 33f which is pretty cool. I have done it down to 38 f without issue. I generally frement @ 68f for most beers and let them drift up 70f depending.

You might need to go with more insulation on the tubes to combat temp loss.

 

[PatrickLS83]

Wow, so first of all I would say your chiller is working incredibly well. You can crash down to about freezing temp which is amazing. I wouldn't really worry about freezing the coil if you have glycol in the reservoir since glycol is anti-freeze. I also wouldn't worry about freezing the beer itself since the alcohol is tough to freeze. General rule of thumb is to step down the temps slowly or you can overload your chiller. For example, step from 60 to 55, then wait for the reservoir to get back to 28 (or whatever), stabilize, then step down another 5 degrees. This is a thermal transfer thing (the cold glycol captures warmth from the fermenter and sends it back to the reservoir, which has a cooling coil and compressor to cool it back down). If you transfer warmth to the reservoir faster than the compressor can cool it down, you're in an overload situation and it will slow your cooling down considerably.

Another point, in the conicals you don't have to dump that much. The conical design is meant for minimizing surface contact between the beer and the yeast, which it does quite well. Usually one yeast dump gets me into clear beer territory on the racking arm. I don't worry about it beyond that.

Last point, I have had a couple issues with the SS brew tech lids not sealing up and i remedied this by bending the clamps a little bit so that they have a tighter "grab" on the lid, and that generally does the trick.

Hope this helps!