I am getting ready to put my first ever batch together. I have a chest freezer that I will eventually turn into a kegerator, but for now I'm going to use it as a fermentation chamber while I get better organized for the conversion project.
I have one of the Johnson Controls temp controllers. It seems to be doing a good job of holding temperature below the setpoint (which I have at 64 F for testing purposes), but when it's cooling it runs down to 58 F. Part of that is the differential value I have set in the controller (which is 5 F by default) and part of it is thermal momentum (just turning off the power doesn't take the cool away from the coils).
I can adjust the differential to something smaller, but it looks like I will still be faced with a cyclical variation of about 5 degrees. Will that be a problem for an ale fermentation? (Say, if it cycles between 63 and 68 F repeatedly.)
I have one of the Johnson Controls temp controllers. It seems to be doing a good job of holding temperature below the setpoint (which I have at 64 F for testing purposes), but when it's cooling it runs down to 58 F. Part of that is the differential value I have set in the controller (which is 5 F by default) and part of it is thermal momentum (just turning off the power doesn't take the cool away from the coils).
I can adjust the differential to something smaller, but it looks like I will still be faced with a cyclical variation of about 5 degrees. Will that be a problem for an ale fermentation? (Say, if it cycles between 63 and 68 F repeatedly.)