Glycol XL Chillers

Description

Item Description

Our Glycol XL line is a series of 4 chillers that have a significantly larger reservoirs than our standard line, the XL line also offers chillers with higher cooling capacities.

These glycol chillers are suitable for applications down to about 5F depending on the heat load.  This makes it ideal for the brewing market, along with many other low temperature applications.  The built in controller maintains the temperature of the glycol at the set point.  It can be used as a typical laboratory bath chiller or by using a submersible pump, chilled glycol can be pumped out to equipment requiring cooling.

Depending on application (desired operating temp/freeze point) you can use any combination of water/glycol you prefer.  It’s typical for brewing applications to use about 33-50% glycol to water.  On our testing down to -14F we used a 50/50 mix without any freezing issues.  It’s our recommendation to use a 50/50 mix due to ease of calculating the mix and the buffer it provides compared to 33% mix which if off just a little bit can freeze at normal operating temperatures.

Intended for maintaining fermentation temps/crash cooling.  Not recommended for dropping wort from boiling temps.  It is common practice to either use a 2 stage system where the chiller pre-cools tap water that then cools the boiling wort, or tap water is used first to drop the temps down to about 100F, then switch over to using the chiller.  Glycol returning to the chiller should never be allowed to reach more than 100F.

It is typical to use one pump per fermenter or vessel you wish to cool.  In this type of setup each pump requires an individual controller to turn each pump on/off independently. The controller on the Glycol Chiller will regulate the temperature of the glycol (for example 28F), the controllers on the pumps would regulate the temperature of each vessel independently by regulating the flow of 28F glycol to that vessel.  Each chiller in the Glycol XL line has enough 3/8″ hookups through the lid for up to 8 fermenters (8 inlet + 8 outlet)

Photos show 2/3HP model- other models follow similar form factor, look, and feel, they are simply scaled up versions.

Lead time for the Glycol XL line is approximately 1-2 weeks

Chiller Specs

Sizing Guideline

Each value in the chart below is per fermenter, so if you have 4qty 1BBL fermenters and you want to be able to crash all 4 at the same time, you’d want a glycol chiller with at least 4800 BTU/hr. With the same number of fermenters, but only crashing one at a time while fermenting in the other three, you would want a chiller with at least 1575 BTU.

Due to the wide range of factors that go into properly sizing a chiller these numbers may not work for everyone, however these figures should cover the majority of brewers.  For example, if you are brewing in rather hot ambient conditions, or your fermenter in not insulated you may need to be more conservative and size the chiller by using the cooling requirements for a fermenter 1 to 2 sizes larger than your actual fermenter size.