Cold weather lagering advice

Maybe I'm just truly embracing my Canadian-ness, but I thought "why not take advantage of this cold weather to make a lager?"

Here's the plan.

1. Fill a big ass bucket with water at about 43F and put it out on my back porch.
2. Fit an aquarium heater and pump to heat and circulate the water within the bucket so that it's all a constant temperature.
3. Calibrate the aquarium heater thermostat with my good thermometer to make sure it stays at 43F.
4. Drop in my fermentation bucket and make some tasty lager.

instead of keeping it inside and using energy to cool it down, why can't i keep it outside and use a bit less energy to warm it up?
Will this work?

This looks intriguing. Kind of like the opposite of a cool water-bath or t-shirt swamp-cooler
thing some of us do to keep the fermentation cool in our basements during summer months.

The water-bath provides a certain amount of controlled thermal mass... It could work.

Something you may want to consider is the range and speed of temperature variation on your back porch. If it can go from -5C to -20C from within a few hours (say from afternoon to night), your aquarium heater may have trouble keeping up.

You may want to put this rig in your garage, where the temp swings could be more moderated.

Cheers.
Patrick

Sounds like a plan worth trying, but I'd try to find a place that stays above freezing if possible. Uses less energy.

The Aquarium heater might have a wide range between on and off, but the fermenter probably won't swing that wide due to thermal mass and the separation from the fermenter.

Wrap some blankets or something around it and put a box over it.

graybeard said:

This looks intriguing. Kind of like the opposite of a cool water-bath or t-shirt swamp-cooler
thing some of us do to keep the fermentation cool in our basements during summer months.

The water-bath provides a certain amount of controlled thermal mass... It could work.

Something you may want to consider is the range and speed of temperature variation on your back porch. If it can go from -5C to -20C from within a few hours (say from afternoon to night), your aquarium heater may have trouble keeping up.

You may want to put this rig in your garage, where the temp swings could be more moderated.

Cheers.
Patrick

Click to expand...

I like this idea. If I had a garage I would definitely go for that. Maybe the garden shed with a long extension cord.

Homercidal said:

Sounds like a plan worth trying, but I'd try to find a place that stays above freezing if possible. Uses less energy.

The Aquarium heater might have a wide range between on and off, but the fermenter probably won't swing that wide due to thermal mass and the separation from the fermenter.

Click to expand...

I agree... the problem is that in this part of Canada in the winter, there's either outside (15F night, 20F day) or basement (58F) or upstairs (68F). The aquarium heater is a 70watt model with a thermostat that's supposed to keep it withing 2 degrees all the time. I plan on experimenting with keeping the water temperature constant before dropping in the ferm bucket.

Remember that most lager yeast strains' optimum temperature for fermenting is 48-54 degrees or so. So, you may find it working harder than you planned if it's cold there.

It might be far easier to do a water bath and a frozen water bottle in the 58 degree basement to keep it at 50 degrees.

tap water right now is in the low 40s... I could just fill the laundry sink and refill daily

Come on! I thought you said you were embracing your Canadian-ness!

Now go find some duct tape and get to work!