I've been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks cleaning up the place. We've been in this house for about 7 years and collected way too much junk over that time. We've also basically landed running, so things that found a spot in a hurry 7 years ago are still cluttering up the same spot.

One of the things to clean up was our two-car garage. It has only ever had one vehicle housed in it, with the rest of the space dedicated to our many interests - brewing, pottery, gardening, electronics and woodwork.

The electronics gear has found its way into another room in the house which is much warmer in the winter and also has more dedicated space so that projects can stay on a bench half done.

The pottery, gardening and woodwork equipment is pretty much as it was, but the brewing gear is getting a make-over.

For a long time I've had a plan for consolidating the cooling plant in the brewhouse. Currently we have three refrigerators standing in a row - one for fermenting lagers, one for lagering itself, and one for serving. When we first moved in I had a freezer dedicated to serving beer, but it was old and soon packed it in.

In between times I have had a dedicated glycol chiller that about 18 months ago lost its refrigerant (at least that's what I hope happened). There was a spare fridge outside, so I never did get a tech in to have a look at the glycol unit.

So there are three fridges in a row and the glycol chiller is still there - which means a lot of room and power is taken by things beer related.

My plan is to use the glycol chiller (or otherwise a freezer) as the cooling plant for:

• the flooded font chill water (below 0 degrees C - to ice it )
• keeping the full kegs at cellar temperature (10-12 deg C)
• chill on demand serving via the glycol - from 12 C keg through stainless coil in the glycol bath and out the flooded font, as per the original working of the glycol system
• pulling English ales from 12 C keg in cellar direct through the beer engine for an authentic warm ale
• fermenting lagers at 10-12C in the cellar (or if there is insufficient room via a cooling line inserted into the fermenter that pumps glycol via a temperature controller)
• fermenting ales at warmer temperatures (via cooling line that pumps glycol)

I scavenged a wooden box from an electronics place a while ago that was the packing around a flat-screen TV. I had in mind that it would form the structure for an insulated box that would become the cellar. After some thinking though, I realised that an old freezer of the right dimensions would make an ideal cellar - already well insulated and built more solidly than I would likely build my own.

With that in mind I found a local bargain freezer that was on its way out. This was big enough to fit 8 kegs, or 4-5 with a large fermenter.

I am yet to figure out if the glycol chiller can be fixed, but I've done some modelling with SketchUp to figure out how it might all go together.

The grey box is the glycol unit, the white box is the old freezer on its side with the door open to the side.

I blogged about this idea when I bought the freezer here.

The idea I have to cool the 'cellar' is to pump glycol through a line that has a fan-forced radiator in it. This ought blow cool air into the box, with a controller to set the temperature.

All being well I will start construction on this this coming weekend. If I take the flooded font out of service, it is sure to speed up the work that needs to be done

I was listening to one of the old archive shows from the Brewing Network this week and it was one of the early ones with Jamil sharing his thoughts on yeast. I've heard it said before, but he made his assertion again that fermentation is 95% of the process in making good beer.

I took notice this time because Daniella tasted his 5 year old Helles and felt like she was back home in Germany. The response from all there who tasted it was quite extraordinary.

So ... I want to make the best beer possible. And I know that mostly the beer made here is pretty good and occasionally even award winning, but at times it does not quite hit the mark.

I realised that by the time a full grain session was done, the fermentation bit was given less attention than needed. Basically, by then I'm usually a bit over the lifting and cleaning. Maybe part of the issue is that I clean the house during the in-between bits of brewing, so that by the end of brew-day clean up there has been too much cleaning all round.

The other issue is that I have gotten so used to HERMAN looking after brewing, that my attention is often somewhere else. So ... 95% is in fermentation?

Anyway, I've thought about this from time to time. I have a row of fridges in the garage that seem to multiply anytime we look away. There is a fridge for fermenting lagers, another for conditioning, and a third for serving (kegerator). Added to this is the glycol chiller that is not working at the moment because it needs to be regassed. The garage is meant for two cars, but there is now barely room for one. And I'm trying to lessen my environmental footprint and use less power, less water etc.

So I was sketching an idea the other day and figured out that if I had insulated fermenters I wouldn't need to have insulated boxes for them. This takes less room and likely less energy. The only insulated box I figured necessary was one that acted as conditioning/cellar. The cooling plant for this could be the glycol chiller once that was operating again.

With glycol as the cooling liquid, simple controllers can turn pumps on or off and pump glycol through cooling loops inside the fermenters if they are too warm. The 'cellar' can be driven by a similar cooling loop but use a fan over some piping to provide evaporative cooling from the glycol. In particular, I think these might do the job.

After hatching a plan, the next step was to see if there were any cold room panels going on ebay. Before I got that far, I discovered an old freezer close by that was no longer working. $15.50 later, I was the proud owner of an insulated box.

The photo below shows that with it on its side, the top lid becomes a side door for keg access. The compressor shelf will need to be removed though. Currently it will only fit 4 kegs inside, but without that shelf it should fit 8. Behind where this shelf is I can fit the heat exchange components mentioned above.

I had a look at the glycol unit. It seems to run ok, just not cool. The controller looks good as does the compressor parts. It looks like it has some simple access points for gassing so hopefully that is all that is wrong with it and that it will hold the gas ok. I'll see if I can get it sorted next week.