Bottle Conditioning in a cold house during winter

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
S

Sungreen20

Member
Joined
Jan 27, 2009
Messages
8
Reaction score
1
Location
St Paul
I just moved into a new house and with the brutally cold winter, we're trying to keep the heat down. Right now the thermostat is set at 60 and the floors are more like 50-55. Anyone have any tips for how to keep bottles warm enough during the bottle conditioning/carbonating phase? I was considering heating pads or heated garden mats for starting seeds indoors. I've also thought about using a rubbermaid tub and a aquarium heater. Anyone try any of these methods with success?
 
I have a fridge with a dual stage controller and will use a heat source in it in my unheated garage to keep bottles at 75F to carbonate. One of the cheap heat sources some people use in these is a light bulb in a paint can. Could you put the bottles in a closet or pantry with one f these to heat just the closet? Or maybe into an insulated cooler or the rubbermaid tub you mentioned? Check out the threads here for the paint can heater.
 
Sungreen20 said:
I just moved into a new house and with the brutally cold winter, we're trying to keep the heat down. Right now the thermostat is set at 60 and the floors are more like 50-55. Anyone have any tips for how to keep bottles warm enough during the bottle conditioning/carbonating phase? I was considering heating pads or heated garden mats for starting seeds indoors. I've also thought about using a rubbermaid tub and a aquarium heater. Anyone try any of these methods with success?
Click to expand...

If nothing else, at least get those bottles off the floor. Store them on a shelf, or if they have to be on the floor, slide a scrap of carpet or sheet of styrofoam under them to insulate. Those cold floors will act as a heat sink on your beer.
 
Wrap everything in lots of towels/blankets/or something similar that can insulate the bottles. Off the floor would be great too. If you have an upstairs or other area that is warmer, put them there. Put them on, over, or near a register. I am using a small quartz heater in my smallest room in my house to control fermentation temps. I live in Indiana and have had issues as well, not like MN temps though! Dang!
 
I have used a pad for keeping seeds warm as a fermentation/conditioning heater before. It's designed to keep seeds 10 degrees above ambient without any temperature controller. I only have one temperature controller, so it's come in handy to heat bottles or a batch of saison while using the controller to ferment something else.

They're pretty cheap too, here's a link to the kind of thing I'm talking about: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044U4F5I/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Home Brew mobile app
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I built a Styrofoam box/lid with temperature control (Johnson A419), ceramic bulb heating & computer fan for circulation - pic below. It also fits carboys to free up my temperature controlled chest freezer post active fermentation for conditioning.

IMG_7951.jpg
 
The beauty of this industry brings out the creativity in all of us! There's no problem we can't fix!
 
If your house has forced air heating, just put the bottles/cases next to a forced air floor vent and put some blankets over the bottles/cases such that it also sort of covers the vent. This will force the heat into area under the blanket and keep the cases warm. The blankets will also keep it insulated.

I have done this and the bottles stay quite warm.

Jonny
 

Similar threads

Bilbo24
Traveling with beer while bottle conditioning???
Replies
29
Views
2K
Bilbo24
Bilbo24
G
Keeping my bottled ale warm in cold climate
Replies
8
Views
716
gparsons460
G
MaxStout
The "short & cool" dry hop method (Janish) - applied to bottle conditioning
Replies
7
Views
2K
minmaxx77
M
luckybeagle
Modifying the Westvleteren 12 Clone Fermentation and Conditioning Schedule?
Replies
6
Views
2K
Kee
Kee
K
Accidentally Cold Crashed a Brown Ale During Peak of Fermentation
Replies
5
Views
1K
SouthForkBrew
SouthForkBrew

Latest posts

Back
Top