Temperature Monitor

I am in the process, the painfully slow process due to school, of building a RIMS setup - and I need to figure out a way to monitor wort outflow temperatures from my CFC. I'd love to make this a permanent part of the controller - and to do so I figured I'd integrate a thermocouple with male threads at the outflow. That said I can't for the life of me find a temperature indicator anywhere that uses a thermocouple rather than a thermistor that also doesn't cost $300.

Has anybody here ever put something like this together from scratch?

Part of me almost wants to go get an Adruino/lab jack and use a computer to control the whole process, but I don't know jack about programming. So PID's it is for me, and thus...the quest for a temperature indicator.

Just got the plans in the mail for the Brutus 10 and was also browsing around his site. This page may help in your quest to figure out how to read the temps coming out of your CFC.

Home of Brutus Ten!

Simple stainless T with two QDs and a thermowell that holds a probe...

Oh gosh. That'd be perfect. How the hell do I build a thermowell?

N5629,
There are some temperature indicators on eBay for ~ $25 - $35. Some of them come with thermocouples. I would contact the seller to see if they have the thermowells. They are also on eBay for ~ $10 - $20. If you are serious about how to build a thermowell, post again and we'll put up the steps. Luck - Dwain

Check out the Brew Troller. BrewTroller

Sorry, that sounded sarcastic, but yes, I was serious about building the thermowell - but naturally, its been done before here so I just dug up an old thread on the topic.

I've looked at the brewtroller project but in honesty I guess I don't fully understand the steps from start to finish of integrating it into a electric setup. As far as it goes, it does look pretty awesome and all-inclusive.