Heatin' up those Conicals??

Figured I would throw this out there to you guys and see what you might have in mind for my application.

I have 4x 22gal stainless conical fermenters and 1x 80gal conical fermenter. None of these are jacketed so I am looking at a way to control the temps, as obviously the 80gal won't fit in a freezer.

My plan is to get some sort of heat wrap and control each fermenter. I will place them in the cold room, wrap them, set the temp and let the wrap do the rest?

Thoughts on some wrap for this application?? :cross:

Thanks!

I've been looking at a few options to do some lagers this winter outside in an insulated box. The two options I found that seem to be the best for conductive heat (directly on the vessel, as opposed to convection by heating up the air) are flexwatt heat tape (www.reptilebasics.com), or a low wattage heat cord (http://www.petco.com/product/109980/Zoo-Med-Repti-Heat-Cable.aspx).

I ordered the 100 watt cord and plan to wrap it around a 15 gal SS conical (15% off until tomorrow). I figure that if it's in a large insulated box (48x48x24), 100 watts should be able to keep things at the right temp. The flexwatt would have been a good option, but on a blichmann conical, there are too many thiungs on the surface to get a nice flat fit. The cord will be easier to get better coverage. Amazon has other heat cord for roofs or wrapping pipes at varying lengths and strenghs. I would be careful that the wattage per foot is not too high because you don't want to melt (plastic conical)/scorch/burn anything.

I'm interested to hear other ideas as well.

There is another local brewery in town that uses stuff from reptile basics and it has given them some good results. I am in contact with another company, heatingtapes.com, to see what they can offer. Will keep this thread updated when I find out some info

I'm sorry, you have 188 GALLONS worth of conicals just hanging around? Holy crap...you'd break the law by having all your fermenters full! lol

Psych said:

I'm sorry, you have 188 GALLONS worth of conicals just hanging around? Holy crap...you'd break the law by having all your fermenters full! lol

Click to expand...

Lol! Starting a microbrewery. Need mawr beer!!!

I would think a heat tape used for keeping pipes from freezing would work using an temperature controlled outlet.

i remember seeing copper or/and stainless type of radiators (aka heat exchanger) submerge in the wort in the fermenters with in and out lets in the lid, you run heating/cooling liquid (glycol most likely) to regulate temp during and post fermentation