heat belt or space heater?

I'm about to brew a BIAB Saison gathered from one of my LHBS. The yeast is WLP565 and I'm thinking about starting low and working my way up to 75-80F. I want to get it warmer than my usual 70 to 72 which is the ambient temp in the kitchen. I thought i'd invest in a heat belt to help get the saison funky but i'm not sure if i want to heat the plastic bucket directly. I have a space heater for the winter with a sort of accurate digital temp. My plan is to increase by a degree every other day and after a week adding the candy sugar to the fermenter to finish drying it out.

Is the heat belt a better bet with consistency or will it risk adding plastic taste to the beer? The space heater would kick in when the temp dips so it should work fine. I sold my carboy a while ago and now brew in a bucket and better bottle but may buy a new one if it would create a better product.

 

I use heat belts on plastic buckets all the time with no off flavors. I think you'll get better control than a space heater.

 

Any good space heater on the market with temp control? Something I can ramp up slowly over 2 weeks?

 

The challenge is, you care about the temp of the beer, not the temp of the ambient air. If you really want a set-it-and-forget-it solution, it's gonna be hard to get away from needing a controller with a probe you can insert into your fermentor, or at least tape to the side with some insulation keeping it from picking up the outside air temp.

 

I've decided to buy a brew belt for my saison. Does anyone know where on the bucket i should put the belt? I've seen the belt near the bottom or the top on some online pics but i'm not sure which would be best.

 

If you aren't using a temp controller, the rule of thumb is the lower the belt on the bucket the higher temp increase you'll get. I would start in the middle and see what kind of temp increase you get, then move up or down as needed. Also wrapping a blanket around the bucket will significantly help with temp increases.

 

Thanks WI_Wino. I already have towels around my buckets to prevent light from coming in. Maybe starting high and working my way down will help increase the temp for the last week. I've heard people really ramping up the temp in the last week when using WLP565. Hopefully this cheap investment will improve my end product.

 

I use a cooler full of water and an aquarium heater. Good way to heat without temp swings.