Grainfather 12VDC Cooling Pump & 3 way cord

Works well for what it is. Pretty expensive for a pump the size of a 9 volt battery, but I suppose you're really paying for the hoses with the quick attach metric fittings.. it takes some babysitting keeping ice in a cooler for it to work. I use a soft sided cooler that zips shut to close as much up to the hoses as possible. Somebody else may find a better cooler/solution to having to watch it. All that said this was much, much cheaper than buying a glycol chiller. So if you are going to be around when you to check periodically on the temperature this one works just fine.

The cooling pump is easy to install and works great.

Over all this is a good system to go with your Grainfather Conical. it's a reasonable price for what is essentially the electrical, coolant connections and small pump that easily integrates with the Conical. the electrical side is well marked and fool proof. The liquid side isn't complicated, but the pump isn't marked as in or out and neither is the Conical. The fittings are all the same on the pump and on the conical/hoses so you can hook the red or blue hose up to either connection on the conical and it will work, but I'm betting is I looked hard I'd find a document where bringing cold coolant in on the high (cold in per GF) vs low ("warm" out per GF) side of the cooling jacket would affect performance. But I'm not that anal.

The pump is a small 12v, 1gpm pump impeller pump so in is the low connection out is the upper (vertical) connection. About the only real thing I don't like about this pump is it cant draft (purge air) so the pump either needs to be submerged or the inlet line needs to have fluid in it. I tested it out with an inlet and outlet line and elevated the pump and it seems to hold prime well once the air is purged. The pump and control harness use a common 12v DC male/female connector (not sure of size). It's the same size as the Northern Brewer Transfer pump (noisier, still 1gpm but a diaphragm design) so you could use other pumps off the shelf if you wanted with some research. I tested it out and it does work. The conical and it's controller is the power supply for the pump so it just sends 12v power to the pump when needed.

The blue and red hoses have quick connects on them with valves that match the Conical's so you can disconnect them and not loose coolant from the hoses or the Conical. They seem to work well.

Over all the setup worked well enough to cool my conical from about 77F (was using Lallemand Philly Sour yeast in a Gose) to 50F overnight. I didn't have a dedicated chiller and was just using a 5 gallon Corny keg full of water inside my bar kegerator and just ran the hoses out the CO2 ports holes in the side. with a dedicated chiller I could have gotten it down further. About 10f above the temp of the source coolant seems to be the lower limit, but that has nothing to do with the conical/pump system.

Over all if I buy another GF Conical then I would definitely buy this kit again to go with it.

After committing myself to a Grainfather conical fermenter, it was time to research cooling solutions. I figured I could come up with something for less than the $999 cost of the official Grainfather glycol chiller. This kit allowed me to do so easily. I doubt you would save much if you were to purchase the pump, QDs, etc. separately. The glycol lines are plenty long enough to reach any chiller solution in the general vicinity of the fermenter. It takes maybe 10 minutes to set up and you’re good to go!
(My cooling solution ended up being a Neslab refrigerated water bath that I scored on eBay for about $180 shipped. It needed a little TLC, but is now running like a champ. I can pull down 6 gallons of beer 25 degrees in a couple of hours.)

Of course you could purchase the glycol chiller for about $1,000. But for much less $$, use this set-up and keep your fermentation cooled to the desired temperature. I drilled a couple of holes in an old cooler, added some water and swapped out a frozen gallon jug of water once or twice/day. Elegant, easy, low-cost solution!