At the beginning of my homebrewing hobby I bought a Fermentemp. It's a home brew heated tray with a resistence inside rated 50W 24V. Later on I discovered much cheaper and equally effective alternatives, I paid this object €179,00 in December 2017.
I am talking about this object: Amazon.it
(this is the new version, my version was 50W and had a different display).
I later built a controller with an STC-1000 and bought a couple of Inkbirds ITC-308S, all used with three heating mats, 25W, which is sufficient for the typical 23-28 litres batch. That means I have overall 4 heating systems, I was not using only the Fermentemp.
Overall, I don't know whether I used the Fermentemp for more than 10 fermentations, probably less.
The Fermentemp failed a few days ago while heating a fermentation. The control electronics still works, but the resistence is kaputt.
I opened the object today. The resistence is stuck inside a metal container which is riveted to a metal plate which is screwed on the tray. The electrical connections are soldered. The resistance is made of a material like talk powder, it disintegrates under your fingers.
I don't see any interest in trying to repair this object, considering the difficulty in finding the resistence, having to drill and re-fix, and to make the soldering (I am not at all inside DIY and those kinds of work). I hoped I would have found a connector and some heating mat or resistance which I could substitute myself.
Overall an extremely, extremely disappointing consumer experience, and a very badly engineered object in my pissed-off opinion. I think a Fermentemp review was necessary after such a failure.
A defective item can happen, but here we have very bad engineering. The two probes are soldered, the heater is soldered, the heater case is riveted, it's all made very cheaply and it simply cannot be serviced. And it's a stupid metal box with a heater and a controller. It's hard to imagine doing worse than that.
I am talking about this object: Amazon.it
(this is the new version, my version was 50W and had a different display).
I later built a controller with an STC-1000 and bought a couple of Inkbirds ITC-308S, all used with three heating mats, 25W, which is sufficient for the typical 23-28 litres batch. That means I have overall 4 heating systems, I was not using only the Fermentemp.
Overall, I don't know whether I used the Fermentemp for more than 10 fermentations, probably less.
The Fermentemp failed a few days ago while heating a fermentation. The control electronics still works, but the resistence is kaputt.
I opened the object today. The resistence is stuck inside a metal container which is riveted to a metal plate which is screwed on the tray. The electrical connections are soldered. The resistance is made of a material like talk powder, it disintegrates under your fingers.
I don't see any interest in trying to repair this object, considering the difficulty in finding the resistence, having to drill and re-fix, and to make the soldering (I am not at all inside DIY and those kinds of work). I hoped I would have found a connector and some heating mat or resistance which I could substitute myself.
Overall an extremely, extremely disappointing consumer experience, and a very badly engineered object in my pissed-off opinion. I think a Fermentemp review was necessary after such a failure.
A defective item can happen, but here we have very bad engineering. The two probes are soldered, the heater is soldered, the heater case is riveted, it's all made very cheaply and it simply cannot be serviced. And it's a stupid metal box with a heater and a controller. It's hard to imagine doing worse than that.
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