Now offering Penguin Chillers! Penguin offers a great selection of glycol chillers that pair nicely with our line of conical fermentors and unitanks. Drop shipped directly from Penguin Chillers so if you have more items in your cart they will ship separately.

Penguin's Description:

Penguin's Stainless Glycol XL line is a series of 4 chillers made with 304 stainless steel. They have a significantly larger reservoirs than their standard line and the XL line also offers chillers with higher cooling capacities. Their 2 piece lid allows you to route tubing and cords through the rear section while having access to the tub through the front portion of the lid. The rear section has 16 small circular openings to accommodate silicone tubing. Plastic caps are provided to plug the holes not in use. There are also 2 additional circular openings to run pump power cords through.

These glycol chillers are suitable for applications down to about 5F depending on the heat load. Their built in controller maintains the glycol temperature at its set point. This makes it ideal for the brewing market, along with many other low temperature applications. By adding 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 to glycol mix ratio that you prefer. It’s a standard practice for brewing applications to use a 33% to 50% glycol to water mix ratio. During testing they used a 50/50 glycol to water mix ratio to temperatures as low as negative -14F without any freezing issues. It’s their recommendation to use a 40/60 glycol to water mix ratio due to ease of calculating the mix and the buffer it provides compared to say a 33% mix ratio which, if just a little bit off, can freeze at normal operating temperatures.

While their chillers are perfect for maintaining fermentation temps/crash cooling, its not recommended to use them for dropping wort from boiling temps. It is a common practice to either use a 2 stage system where the chiller pre-cools the water which then cools the boiling wort. You can also use water to drop the temps down to about 100F, then switch over to using the chiller. NOTE: Glycol returning to the chiller should never be allowed to reach more than 100F.

It is typical scenario to use one pump per fermenter or vessel that you wish to cool. In this type of setup, each pump used will require its own individual controller allowing for the pump to be turned off and on independently of all other pumps. The controller on the Glycol Chiller itself will regulate the glycol temperature, (for example say 28F) within that chiller. At the same time the controllers attached to each pump would regulate the temperature of that individual vessel independently by regulating the flow of 28F glycol to that vessel.

Each chiller in the Glycol XL line has 18 total small circular openings for running either 3/8″ ID or 1/2″ ID silicone tubing in addition to the power cords for the pumps.  Each XL chiller is set up to handle 8 pumps at one time. You can drill additional holes into your rear lid if additional pumps are needed however, they strongly suggest you contact them regarding the additional load on the XL chiller before doing so.

For brewing applications:

The chiller can be used on up to 8 fermenters at the same time.

This chiller is intended for maintaining fermentation temperatures or crash cooling and is not recommended for dropping wort from boiling temps. It is a 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.

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.

Chiller Specs

Sizing a Glycol Chiller for Brewing:

These suggestions assume a decently insulated vessel (neoprene jacket or better) in a modest ambient temperature of 80F. If your setup is uninsulated, or running in hotter ambient conditions you’ll need to allow for more BTU/hr. The cold crash is figured for about 18hrs, if you want a faster crash you’ll need to add more BTU/hr. When in doubt, use the suggestions for a vessel 1-2 sizes bigger than your actual size.