Hi Bill --

My name is Dave and I am a homebrewer ... Hmmm -- sounds like how one introduces himself in another organization -- LOL. Actually, I am a homebrewer, just not a WCG HomeBrewer team member since I have been an active member of a different team. I would love to hear from some of the rest of your team mates, Bill. Maybe hear about some kick-@ss recipes they have brewed (sorry Nels if I went beyond the line there) or stories about mopping the ceiling after a wild fermentation.

My, oh my, this California Common that I have been drinking this evening is quite good!

A friendly bump from your brewing buddy,

Thanks. Glad you joined and glad to hear from you here. I started designing a HERMS last year, but got away from it when I became too busy and distracted with other things -- but I'll get back to it. Knowing how it sometimes takes me forever to finish a home project, it'll probably be a couple of years before I ever get the thing done. Meanwhile it's just 5 gallon batches mashed in a simple ice chest tun and boiled with a propane turkey fryer. Still fun and tasty. I've tilled a spot in my garden to plant some hops rhizomes; this will be my first foray into that area.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

After originally posting this a few minutes ago, I just discovered that we have recruited one more member, so I'm editing this to reflect that.

Our team started 11/21/05, so we have now existed for 90 days as of the last statistics update on 02/19/2006 at 23:59:59. At that time here is how our team stood, out of 9,554 teams on the WCG:

We have 42 current members with a maximum of 43, which makes us #192 in team size (tied with 4 other teams which also have 42 current members). That puts us in the top 3% of all teams by size. Our team has grown well this month as part of the February recruitment contest; we have recruited 9 new members in the past 18 days. It would be nice to get just a few more. In that contest we are still ranked 2nd out of a five-team race, but have very little chance of catching the leader -- UserFriendly.

We have completed over 3.5 years worth of computing -- 3:213:05:16:36 -- to rank #674; that puts us in the top 8% of all teams. That's a lot of power that would have just gone down the drain.

We have returned 3,570 results (ranked #673) and have generated 777,285 points (ranked #690) -- both of which are also in the top 8% of all teams.

Points are what we use for competitive comparisons, and yesterday was our second best day by generating 17,930 points -- which ranked us 116th and put us in the top 2% of all teams. Since we're only in the top 3% by size, we're carrying more than our weight. GO HOMEBREWERS!!! Our best day ever was on 2/07 when we generated 18,317 points, and we've had only one other 17k day, but with our new members I hope we will make that the norm and perhaps even increase to 20k/day. I know that this is nothing compared to the big crunchers, but every little bit helps, and it's moving our team up the charts. But progress is going to be a bit slower now that we are nearing the top; the point differences between one position and another are becoming much more significant so that it takes a large difference in points to advance much. Where we used to jump 40 or 50 positions in a day, we are now facing 5 jumps or less.

My goal is for our team to make it into the top 500 by April 1st -- 40 days from now. That position is now held by team "Eagan Computer Posse" which now has a total of 1,134,811 points (a lead of 357,526 points); lately they have been averaging about 5k points per day, whereas we have been averaging about 16k, so we are gaining at about 11k per day and it should take us about 33 days to pass them if things stay the same; however, that team might be dropping in the rankings, so passing them doesn't necessarily mean that we'll make it into the top 500. There are probably a number of teams ready to pass them, too. If we could manage to recruit just another half dozen productive members, I feel very confident that we will be in the top 500 by April 1st.

By the way, on the DC-Vault website, our team is ranked 208th, gaining on 207th, out of 329 teams; at one time we were ranked 271, so we have progressed a lot. But the best news is that we are actually beating MOT -- MyOnlineTeam -- which is now ranked 213th.

Cheers, and keep on crunchin' and brewin'.

Bill Velek, Team Captain

Thanks, Fred, and welcome. Are you talking about my long post discussing the possibility of a peltier-driven heat pipe for fermenters? I would have thought most folks would have gotten bored and quit reading long before they reached my signature lines. But it looks like our team has picked up two new recruits. We can use them, but more importantly, WCG and all of mankind can use them.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Hi Bill,

I guess I replied to the wrong post - but that's OK, cooling fermentation is of interest to me in Arizona, since it's too warm to brew for at least 6 months of the year (78 degrees or so indoors)

I brew mostly meads, cysers, melomels, etc. I use a high yield yeast at low temps so I can get fuller honey and fruit sugar breakdown without the "undesirables" of decomposed fruit or cogeners from partially broken down complex molecules). I can also kick the yeast again at warmer temps for a bottle re-ferment with corn sugar to make sparkling products (and yes I did make blueberry grenades once! fortunately I was in the room when the first one went off, so the rest went outside quickly)

So I'm thinking how to cool things without requiring an entire fridge just for carboys; no moving parts, no pumps sounds good. A Peltier device to provide a high thermocline would seem to me necessary, as would insulation around the carboy.

I wonder, though, because of the surface area exposed by the glass, if it wouldn't be better to use an external container (say, a barrel of some sort) filled with a heat transfer liquid such as a glycol [antifreeze derivative] or an oil (something with a higher heat capacity) and have the Peltier cool that instead. The trouble I'm seeing is that glass only has a heat conductivity of .8 (kJ/cm/degC) vs copper's 400 (?if I remember??) so the temperature difference from outside must be greater (depending on the copper pipe surface area).

On the other hand, water's .6 kJ/cm/C heat conductivity isn't great either, so you can have all the cooling in the world at the pipe, unless you can get the liquid to circulate, you'd have to calculate the ability of the cooling to diffuse to the outside VS the outside temp's ability to diffuse back inward. That's where the insulation comes in, I suppose.

Does anyone know [if]/[how] exothermic the yeast action is?



heat transfer fluids:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home...g/index.cfm/mytopic=12940

quick tutorial on heat transfer:
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/heattransfer/heattransfer.html

Fred