Does anyone have any tips/tricks to help with temperature control that might be cheap or easy? Not quite ready enough to invest in anything major, but what simple things might you do to help keep the yeast where you need em?
Temp Control
- Thread starter Szimdars
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I'm not worried about hot right now.. so no swamp cooler needed. But cold? I have my FV sitting on plywood over the bathtub.. The FV is covered with a plastic garbage can. Contains temps as best it can. Once I see the temp of the wort dropping I run an extension cord to the can and put an adapter inside that I have a couple of 7w nite lites plugged into. To keep the light from the FV I cover the lights loosely with alum foil.. If it gets too warm, I can either unplug it or just turn off one of the lights.
solbes
Well-Known Member
Other things you might be able to use, heating pad on very low w/ some towels in between (otherwise too hot). I use a seed germination mat, that can heat the beer another 5 degrees warmer or so. I think it's a 23 watt model, so pretty efficient too. A lot of people use incadescent bulbs.
For cooling, placing the bucket in another vessel, filling with water up to 1/2 the bucket height works well. I just swapped 2 gatorade bottles that were frozen and it worked well for me in August. I had a total of 4, so 2 were always in the freezer. Now I inherited a free mini fridge and bought a digital temp controller. It's working perfect to keep my Kolsch at 60 on the nose!
For cooling, placing the bucket in another vessel, filling with water up to 1/2 the bucket height works well. I just swapped 2 gatorade bottles that were frozen and it worked well for me in August. I had a total of 4, so 2 were always in the freezer. Now I inherited a free mini fridge and bought a digital temp controller. It's working perfect to keep my Kolsch at 60 on the nose!
There's a good BrewingTV episode called "Happiness is a warm carboy" that details using a big plastic tub (cheap) filled with water (very cheap) and an aqaurium heater stick (maybe $20?) to maintain warmer temps.
bomberman
Well-Known Member
What are you looking to do, raise or lower temps? For keeping things cool, I've been looking at building a fermentation chamber, but they can be somewhat of an investment, so for my next batch I plan to swamp cooler/air conditioner setup that should keep things in the 60f range. You can search swamp cooler on here and find a lot of easy to build setups.
smalliewader
Well-Known Member
That's an awesome idea. I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to warm things up a bit lately....I can't believe I didn't think of that for my swamp cooler.
It's that time of year where the heat isn't running much, so the beer is sitting between 62-64*. I need to bump it up a few degrees, that aquarium heater sounds like the perfect solution.
OP lives in TX?? I'm guessing a brew belt or heater is not going to be on the equipment list!
Unless you are trying to get yeast esters, I wouldn't mess with temperature at all. Fermentation will warm up your vessel 5-10 degrees F and that puts you in a lot of ale yeasts perfect range. I'm all for fermenting cooler than warmer.
The same is true for the bucket idea, regardless of whether you're going warmer or cooler.
Put some frozen water bottles in the bucket to cool it to desired range, use a heater stick to warm it up. The water bath is good because it takes longer for the temperature swings, giving you closer control over the rise and fall.
If you're a DIYer then build a box from wood, insulate it with foam, hack open an old mini-fridge (free), wire into a thermostat ($15) and that will get your cooling down to high lager temps (my thermostat goes to 55*, so close but no cigar) and every ale temp you could want.
Put some frozen water bottles in the bucket to cool it to desired range, use a heater stick to warm it up. The water bath is good because it takes longer for the temperature swings, giving you closer control over the rise and fall.
If you're a DIYer then build a box from wood, insulate it with foam, hack open an old mini-fridge (free), wire into a thermostat ($15) and that will get your cooling down to high lager temps (my thermostat goes to 55*, so close but no cigar) and every ale temp you could want.
