StillSmart

OK, so you can freeze jack to up the alcoholic strength of your fermented product.
No question,no doubt.And it can save you the strip run.
Freeze jacking again, to try and fulfill the second stage of distillation, is very questionable.
And I understand is not promoted by anyone here.
I think that I have that one right.

Just trying to be clear.

Robert.

Yup that's where I am. You don't get the clarity from jacking either. Because it stays liquid the impurities stay in suspension in guess.

I use -15c on my freezer. Works well. As the knob won't go down to -114c I guess anything would be ok

Easydrinker wrote:OK, so you can freeze jack to up the alcoholic strength of your fermented product.
No question,no doubt.And it can save you the strip run.
Freeze jacking again, to try and fulfill the second stage of distillation, is very questionable.
And I understand is not promoted by anyone here.
I think that I have that one right.

Just trying to be clear.

Robert.

Understood

Mash wrote:Yup that's where I am. You don't get the clarity from jacking either. Because it stays liquid the impurities stay in suspension in guess.

I use -15c on my freezer. Works well. As the knob won't go down to -114c I guess anything would be ok

I shall cancel the delivery of liquid nitrogen first thing in the morning

Good call.

Mash.

From experience I would go the STC100 route coupled to a tube heater from B&Q or similar for the simple reason of ease of cleaning, I have been running a cabinet like this for my all grain brewing for years and now I am into distilling use it for washes as well and on occasion I have had yeast monsters from both worts and washes climb out of the fermenter and make a proper mess, being lazy after this has happened all I need to do is empty the cabinet disconnect the tube heater and wash the the freezer out whereas if your fermenter is wrapped in an electric blanket you have a bigger job on your hands.

With the STC switching both the freezer and heat it maintains +/- one degree so for beers I ferment at 18C then chill to around 12C to clear the beer for washes its 28C followed by cooling to 5C for clearing.

With the STC switching both the freezer and heat it maintains +/- one degree so for beers I ferment at 18C then chill to around 12C to clear the beer for washes its 28C followed by cooling to 5C for clearing.

Absolutely not. Use the STC for heating yes. But do not connect the freezer to it. Fridges and freezers are different things and you will burn out the freezer up. I have checked this out with a fridge engineer.....cos i thought they were just the same with different thermostats. I was wrong.

This whole idea assumes cooling is not required for fermentation only heat.
The freezer is for stripping.

I have read this post three or four times now.
I am still struggling to make sense of it, and so am calling it a night.

Robert

I have updated the OP hope that helps.

Absolutely not. Use the STC for heating yes. But do not connect the freezer to it.

Not true the STC1000 has a built in user adjustable compressor delay which prevents rapid compressor switching which I and most other users have maxed out at 10 minutes, I have had mine running for several years almost constantly without any problem.

scubadiver wrote:
Not true the STC1000 has a built in user adjustable compressor delay which prevents rapid compressor switching which I and most other users have maxed out at 10 minutes, I have had mine running for several years almost constantly without any problem.

So, this does now sound interesting.
When we are in the depths of winter, and I have more time to play, I will come back to this.

Robert.

Have a look at homebrewery.nz and follow the link in the light print at bottom of the page, left hand side.

This sets out pretty clearly what this controller is capable of.

scubadiver wrote: I have had mine running for several years almost constantly without any problem.

On a fridge or a freezer?

Its been running a chest freezer for three years or so now, the two deciding factors for myself in choosing a chest freezer over anything else were.

In most upright freezers there are coolant pipes running under the shelves and whilst I have read that it is possible to bend these down out of the way and fit a fermenter in knowing my luck I would fracture the pipe and the freezer would be useless, the other reason was I tend to have two fermenters on the go all the while either fermenting or conditioning beer and a chest freezer gives me the room for this.

Result.

I blew one up with an STC trying to make it a chiller from a freezer. Almost looked like a bullet had got through the PCB. Fridge engineer said Noooooooooooooooooooooo

So on the face of it thats good news. Even better then a full range cabinet. Fermenting with full control and stripping. Like I think you said earlier, remove the STC from the equation and just turn the freezer on. 3 days later stripped.

If you set it up carefully, the transition from fermenter cabinet to stripper could be very very simple.