BrewBuilt X3 (53L) + RAPT Glycol Chiller — 2 batches in
"I am brewing in an uninsulated garage, 42L batches of a pilsner fermented at 12°C, and an oatmeal stout at 22°C that I only pitched yesterday. Both were done over cooler months so I can't speak to how it copes on hot summer days. BrewBuilt X3 Conical Build quality is excellent, its even mirror-polished inside! It is easy to clean and assemble, every fitting went on without a fight. I've seen people complain about properly seating the 8" lid seal, but I've had zero issues there. The 3" butterfly dump valve with the Flex Chamber Collection Jar is great for trub/hop dumps, however the 3" tri-clamp that comes with the Flex Chamber Collection Jar is a 3-piece clamp and is fiddly to get on and off one-handed, I'll be swapping to a 2-piece clamp like all the others to fix that. I run my RAPT Temperature Controller right next to the fermenter, and so far have had no issues with Bluetooth connectivity to a RAPT Pill inside the fermenter. RAPT Glycol Chiller Cooling performance is solid, but I hit three issues: Leaking at the dry-break fitting: I couldn't get the thread-to-barb fitting to seal against the male dry break without adding PTFE tape. Once the retaining nut is seated, it looks like there isn't enough thread left to fully engage the barb fitting so glycol crept up the outside of the dry break and pooled on top of the chiller. Tape fixed it no probs. Temperature overshoot and pump freezing: at both 20% and 25% glycol, set to -4°C, I'd see the chiller overshooting the temp to -6°C/-7°C, and ice forming around the refrigerant pipes in the reservoir. The reservoir's small enough that the pump sits close to those pipes and would freeze solid. I moved to 35% and haven't seen it overshoot or have any freezing since, although I am yet to cold crash which is when I had the most problems with it at 25%. Missing TC clamps/seals in the box: 2x 1. 5" clamps + seals are needed for the connection to the glycol jacket inlet and outlet but were not included in the kit. Easy to grab from a homebrew shop, but if you're ordering, throw some spares into your cart. Value Picked the X3 on features, not price, so I don't have a comparison but I would be more then happy to spend the same amount again for another one in the future. The glycol chiller is near half the price of the bigger G40 that I was otherwise looking at. My plan is two 53L fermenters eventually, and two RAPT chillers still costs about the same as one G40, with the bonus that one fermenter cold crashing can't rob cooling from the other. Verdict: X3 is an easy 5/5. The glycol chiller does the job but needed some attention to run reliably, but so far it looks like it's doing a great job! I'm not sure I would want to run 2 fermenters on it as I do see some big swings when it's cooling, but it's perfectly capable so far for one 53L fermenter."