Jury rigs and other gadgets

I'm fascinated by the creative innovations my fellow homebrewers come up with to fix problems or achieve specific goals. I love reading the Zymurgy Gadgets issue for this reason, and love innovations I've found here like the BMBF.

Anyone else have any other cool jury rigs to share?

I'll start with my ghetto fermentation chamber. My house is pretty cold in the winter so I needed something to help maintain a slightly warmer temp for my fermentation vessel during these cold months. Rather than investing in a fancy chamber, or cranking up the heat in my fermentation space, I found an old piece of foam in my basement which I use as an insulator. This stuff works like a champ for temp maintenance...I actually use another piece of this on my MLT keggle. When I need a bump, I wrap a heat pad (like you'd use for sore muscles) inside the foam insulator and moderate the temp control with the switch (mine has three levels). I don't want a constant application of heat, and may want an extra bump in the middle of the night when my fermentation room temp drops, so I can actually run this through a light timer to give it a bump every couple hours. I've been running the first stage of a lager in a room that's around 40 degrees, and this set up has helped me keep a constant 50 during primary. Here's a photo:

Nice idea! I should take the electric mattress pad off our bed and use it for a fermenter heater.

When the wife complains about being cold I can just say, "I don't know what you have to complain about, YOU get all the blankets!"

That was going to be my plan... But I was going to use a temp controller and just turn the blanket up on HIGH. I didn't end up brewing enough this winter, and the weather was light. I just left the few in my dining room.

rivertranced said:

Anyone else have any other cool jury rigs to share?

Click to expand...

You mean like a pressurized PET bottle filler made of a busted carbonator cap?

Ugly junk 2012, Ghetto Lagering Chamber

Bottling Tips for the Homebrewer

My Ugly Junk- Corona Mill Station...

Using a pasta maker to mill grain.

Was trying to figure out the cheapest, easiest way to make a manifold for the cooler. Lowe's had an open box of copper tube. Thought why go through the trouble of making a fancy manifold or fooling with the braid.... bend, dremel cutting wheel, attach some tube... simple, 30 minutes (including dawdle time) and done... getting consistent 80% efficiency... I'm happy