Advice Please: Next Purchase Kegs or Temp. Control

Hi All,

I'm looking for a little advice please. I've been brewing some good beer for a little over a year now and I'm pondering my next larger purchase. I live in a ranch w/o basement and have difficult time maintaining fermentation temps during the 4-5 warmer months of the year. Therefore, my bedroom has become a cold room, with the AC constantly running to maintain 68 degrees, probably wasting a decent amount of electricity. I've thought about the son of a fermentation chiller or the Igloo Ice Cube cooler as solutions to this issue, both which could be stored in the garage. Lately, I've also been thinking about fermenting in my spare fridge, also in my garage. This would help maintain a solid temp, producing better beer. So it comes down to this, should I buy....

1) Refrigerator thermostat (analog or digital, which one?)
2) 2 Keg System (for simplicity)
3) Let's throw this in...Turkey Fryer...for brewing out of the house

Any advice would be great. Thank you.

Controlling fermentation temperatures is a major step in producing quality brews. Since you have a spare fridge, buying a digital controller makes sense.

If it was me I would get a Love TS controller and use the fridge as a fermentation chamber. The love can be seen here http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=9352000

If you do that you can also turn the fridge into a keggerator and then use the controller in conjunction with a heating pad to raise a carboy temp to 65-68 to ferment ales.

I have used the Ice Cube and frozen soda bottles to get a carboy down to 60 and maintain it at around 63-65 for a week by just changing out the bottles. so that does work but the fridge will make for a more convenient solution.

I feel that once I was able to control my fermentation temperatures my beer started to get much better and more repeatable.

Although getting the brewing outside is a big plus, well it was for me. So get the turkey fryer and then the love. That will set you back about 100 for the pair. And you will be able to do full boils outside and control fermentation temperatures and you beer will thank you.

I am great at spending other people money!! LOL

Mike

david_42 said:

Controlling fermentation temperatures is a major step in producing quality brews. Since you have a spare fridge, buying a digital controller makes sense.

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Can't agree more.

Temp controlled fermentation is one of the best investments you can make as a homebrewer.

+1 for temp control. Having your beer on tap is always a plus but not as nice as being able to produce consisten quality beers.

So far it's a sweep for Temperature Control. I've got one recommendation in, could others please recommend their favorite choice for a controller.

+1 for temp controll. You'll need temp control for kegging anyways if you ever decide to use a chest freezer keezer.

I prefer the Ranco digitals. They can be had for a song ($45) on Ebay for the single stage variety.

+1 on the temp control. Yes kegging is great, but I would trade my kegerator for a temp controlled place for fermentation any day of the week.

+10 On Temp control.

You need great beer first before you can keg it and proper temp control is the way to do it.

Yet another vote for temp control - either the Ranco or the Love would be great choices.

I'm gonna go against the crowd on this one, here's why:

You said you have trouble during the 4-5 warm months, & they are almost over so you won't really need that controller for another 7-8 months.

An Igloo Ice Cube cooler and some pop bottles filled with frozen water is a fairly easy way to control temp. especially when you consider the fact that the weather is going to start to cool down in the next few weeks for most folks. You don't mention where you live so I'm guessing about your location. But in most sections of the USA cooler are also either on sale or about to go on sale.

Kegging is a tremedous time saver over bottling. If you are like most people nowadays time is you most precious asset.

I perfer having my kegs in my spare fridge.

Anyway, thought you might like a different perspective to consider.

Thanks all. First, to clarify, I live in NJ where the summers can be hot and humid and the winters a little cold. I can only maintain solid temps when the winter thermostat is on always.

I'm looking into the Ranco or the Love Controller now, both are similar in price. The Ranco 111000 is a little cheaper when combined with shipping on ebay. I realize that getting a controller will allow me to make even better beer with a good temp control.

Will I be able to maintain winter temps a heating pad in the fridge for inside the fridge in my uninsulated garage. I guess I'll need to do a little experiment when the time comes.

Thanks for the input as well Abracadabra. He does make a good point about TIME being an asset, and with two littles, time is huge. Therefore, I mostly brew and bottle after 9 PM.

Thanks for the input fellas. My wife is also happy, it appears that there is now an end in sight to the the two carboys in our small closet floor. I have to mention that I had a beer bucket explode in there when I was really new at this, so that fear is always in her still and beer stains on my ceiling!

hey so let me get this str8. i'm also going to get that love controller.. and put it in my freezer.. but you say i can use a heating pad on the bottom on my carboy which will allow me to also ferment in the same freezer?? did i get this right?? any special heating pad??

Steel-Reserve said:

hey so let me get this str8. i'm also going to get that love controller.. and put it in my freezer.. but you say i can use a heating pad on the bottom on my carboy which will allow me to also ferment in the same freezer?? did i get this right?? any special heating pad??

Click to expand...

What he is saying is during the summer the freezer will be used as normal with the temp control working the compressor to cool to ferment temps And in winter the freezer will be unplugged and the temp control will heat the freezer compartment to ferment temps by means of the heating pad. keeping it constant all year round

Postman I don't know if just a heating pad will be enough when the ambient temps are down in the teens during the winter may need something with a little more wattage.