How to go about controlling temperature inside my fermentation chamber.

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.

Allab8

Active Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
29
Reaction score
1
I'm almost done building my fermentation chamber, and I'm wondering how I should control the fermenting temperature. I've seen tops for carboys that have a stainless steel thermowell on them, that insert into the center of your brew. Anyone have any experience controlling the temp. based on internal temp of the brew? Or should I just control the temp of the box?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Also, I'm going to use a couple of computer fans to circulate air inside. Should these run all of the time or only when the refrigerator is on??


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Easiest would be to control the "box". Keep the temp ~5° under what you want the wort temp to be and you should be good.
 
That's how I do it now, in my kegerator, just didn't know if those thermowells were worth trying. I guess not if you think about it. The fridge would run for long periods of time.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
I use a thermo well. Works fine. I like knowing the temperature in the middle of my fermenting beer. I bought mine from brewershardware. They are good quality and large enough to fit almost any kind of probe.
 
My thought is that using a well will chill the outside temp too much,while the internal temp is going to be warmer. Will it effect the beer taste in a bad way? Cooler is better than warmer, right?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Under high krausen there is enough mixing that I think temperatures are pretty homogeneous. Somewhere I heard about a study that showed minimal differrence between the inside and outside of fermenting wort. Basically it didn't really matter where you measured the temperature.
 
I have a bucket lid that I drilled an extra hole into. That hole gets a rubber plug that has a thermowell fed through it.
 
Except at the time where there is rapid temperature change, the temperature measured at the center of the wort will be nearly equal to the temperature at the outside of the fermenter. People with temperature controllers like the STC-1000 or Johnson Controls have good success with putting the controller probe on the outside of the fermenter and covering it with some insulating material. A bit of bubble wrap taped over the outside of the controller probe so that it holds the probe against the fermenter will be just fine.
 
I use two separate controllers, one for the entire chamber and another that uses a thermowell for the carboy/bucket. I keep the chamber at serving temp and use the carboy controller with a FermWrap to control the beers fermentation temp.

I will add that I keep the sensor for the entire chamber in about 8oz water to help dampen the cycling of my unit.
 
+1 for bubble wrap taped over temp probe inside ferm chamber (converted old chest freezer). Works great. One of the best upgrades I've made during my home brew journey.
 
I had my chamber set up to run only when cooling, but found that it had more I've build up on the chill plate and tended to over shoot the temp more than when I've just left it running all the time.
 
I built a 2" foam board chamber 2' x4' inside then added an office fridge to the side with a strong cfm fan in the freezer and use the stc-1000 to control. it turns the fridge off and on and put a fan on the fridge coils that turns on with the pid also because the coils get too hot and heat up the fridge, I have 1 temp probe in the air of the chamber and 1 in a thermowell inside the lid of one bucket.

I have rtd displays for both the air and the wort but the the pid controls the air that way I don't overshoot and it works great
 
I used to use tape a probe to my plastic fermentor connected to a homedepot thermostat while using a SOF chamber:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=79556

Then when i upscaled to DIY conical i made a thermowell into the beer, hooked up to a STC-1000 with DYI chiller, no chamber.

Thermostat worked well, low voltage, and cheap. But i'd recommend going the STC-1000 route for future proofing.
 
I have a number of temperature controller options if you need anything let me know www.brewsbysmith.com

20141127_122651.jpg
 
I have a number of temperature controller options if you need anything let me know www.brewsbysmith.com

I've used my brewsbysmith controller for a few months now, after having made my own STC1000 controller. I love being able to ramp temperatures automatically. I'd just recommend practicing setting it a few times to make sure you understand how to use it.
 
I am working on a ferment chamber/compartment inside a keezer. I first had a thermal well then tried taping the probe to the outside of the bucket. I was thinking the thermal well would be better, but it turned out I got a more consistent stable temp with the probe on the outside. The temp measured in the center of the bucket was rock solid, but was moving a couple degrees with the thermal well. The heat pad was also on for less time overall too. I was testing with just still water so not sure how it would work with beer and active yeast.
 
Back
Top