Fermenter Heater Options

[amartinez]

It's starting to get a bit cold in Southern California (queue anybody from somewhere that gets actually cold to call us weak) and I noticed that my fermentation chamber hasn't moved much above 62 in the last few days. I was looking into getting something to warm things up in there, but I was curious is anybody had a preference regarding a heating wrap or a pad. I was originally leaning towards the wrap, but I thought a second opinion couldn't hurt.

 

[BetterSense]

62 doesn't sound that bad, but you can buy pig warmers (basically a heating pad) from farm stores that work really well and are cheap.

 

[Sarrsipius]

How big is your chamber? I use a 16cf freezer with a Ranco controller. In the winter I put a small space heater (heater is about an 8 inch cube) inside the freezer and plug that into the controller. Unplug the freezer, set the controller to heat instead of cool and it works great.

 

[amartinez]

How big is your chamber? I use a 16cf freezer with a Ranco controller. In the winter I put a small space heater (heater is about an 8 inch cube) inside the freezer and plug that into the controller. Unplug the freezer, set the controller to heat instead of cool and it works great.

Mine's much smaller than that, it's a 2 corny kegerator that only fits one carboy at a time. With such a small space I'm afraid that the space heater might warp the plastic or something. Also, I mostly wanted to stick with that site because I'm very close to a reward threshold and just want to get that and be done with it. But I'll take the pig warmer as a vote for the heating pad

 

[solbes]

+1 on heating pad. I use a 23 watt seed germination mat.

 

[Spartan1979]

I'm going to try one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002AQCQO/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Try a brew belt. The brew belt has an internal tstat set to 70 i believe, but on a temp controller it really doesn't matter.

 

[theveganbrewer]

This solution works wonderfully and costs 6 dollars to make.

http://www.wortomatic.com/articles/Fermentation-Can-Heater

 

[Monkey55]

It's starting to get a bit cold in Southern California (queue anybody from somewhere that gets actually cold to call us weak) and I noticed that my fermentation chamber hasn't moved much above 62 in the last few days. I was looking into getting something to warm things up in there, but I was curious is anybody had a preference regarding a heating wrap or a pad. I was originally leaning towards the wrap, but I thought a second opinion couldn't hurt.

I live in Lakewood and have my son-of-fermentation chamber is in the garage. It has dipped down to 49* at night in my garage. During the day, the chamber barely gets up 58*.

This solution works wonderfully and costs 6 dollars to make.

http://www.wortomatic.com/articles/Fermentation-Can-Heater

This is awesome. I'm going to make one tonight. Thanks for the link.

E

 

[mobilecabinworks]

Brew belts do not have an internal thermostat, they just heat. Mine raised my temp from 55F to around ~75F where it held the temp. I'm looking into getting a thermostat to control the belt for me. Side note, it did warm the small area I was using it in quite well, so you might be able to just mount the belt in there, or perhaps stick a ferm wrap to the back wall.

 

[mistercameron]

How about a ceramic reptile heater? I'm giving one a try with a small ac fan and it keeps my fermenter nice and toasty. So far the 60w "bulb" has been enough here in sd.