Ferm chamber setup

[balrog]

Found this thread- glad i did.
I just got an upright freezer that i have been using with an inkbird. I have a conical fermentor with a thermowell. I pit the probe in there.
What i have found is the freezer drops the temp well below the set point- i.e. i set it at 70, but it will drop to 66.
Is this swing too much for the beer? Should i get a heat lamp to help off-set the cold? I dont qant to fry the beer- or the compressor!

If the thermowell is showing that then I'd personally not want a 4+ degree swing. But simple controllers like STC or InkBird can only do simple control--higher than setpointplussetrange? Turn on cool until setpoint reached; similarly for heat. You'd have to go to a PID controller to get predictive heat/cool, as it "learns" what the overshoot is and turns off the heat/cool before a simple controller setpoint is reached and coasts to the setpoint. See, for instance, BrewPi.

What you could *try* would be putting the probe on the outside of the fermvessel and log thermowell temp versus various partial/lesspartial/morepartial covered outer temp and see what works better. Having the probe on the outside would "feel" the fermchamber change faster than inside the middle of the beer volume.

Definitely put a fan in the chamber to stir things up.

 

[Nate R]

If the thermowell is showing that then I'd personally not want a 4+ degree swing. But simple controllers like STC or InkBird can only do simple control--higher than setpointplussetrange? Turn on cool until setpoint reached; similarly for heat. You'd have to go to a PID controller to get predictive heat/cool, as it "learns" what the overshoot is and turns off the heat/cool before a simple controller setpoint is reached and coasts to the setpoint. See, for instance, BrewPi.

What you could *try* would be putting the probe on the outside of the fermvessel and log thermowell temp versus various partial/lesspartial/morepartial covered outer temp and see what works better. Having the probe on the outside would "feel" the fermchamber change faster than inside the middle of the beer volume.

Definitely put a fan in the chamber to stir things up.

These are great ideas/ points! Thank you!