Finishing Off a Saison

[Jamo99]

I've got a Saison that's to be brewed next week. I'm wondering how to easily raise the temperature for one carboy to help that yeast finish off without hurting the rest of my babies. My fermenting area is 68-70 typically.

I was thinking of two different options to do this.

1) Move the carboy to a different closet and get a space heater to bump the temperature locally.
2) Get a thermacare heat wrap for lower back muscle relief and wrap that around the carboy. I've never used a thermacare wrap before for anything, just an idea that popped into the ol' head.

Any advice would be appreciated, especially when during fermentation I want to bump up the temp to get that Saison profile.

 

[theoriginalryan]

the heat wrap idea is a interesting one, but i dont think it would work. They dont seem to make that much heat, it would probably get disapated pretty quick. They only last a couple hours also, and they are not cheap. Best bet would probably be to just go get a heating pad for walmart. They used to have one that had a lcd control on it to control temp, but im not sure how low it went. Was only 20 bucks.

 

[Kai]

When I brew my Saison - very soon - I plan on moving it to the boiler room once it gets going. It's somewhere in the eighties in there, I think.

 

[theoriginalryan]

why i didnt say this earlier i do not know, but a week ago i bottled a sasion. after about 4 days fermenting i cover it in a sleeping bag, with just the blowoff sticking out. It climbed up to 79 from 70 on it own, just from the ferment. i Tasted it at bottle, was good, but seems quite dry. It should calm down tho, ill give it 6 weeks and tell ya how it turned out.

 

[Jamo99]

thanks for the replies. i'm in an apartment without a mechanical closet, so moving it to the heating equipment or boiler room is out. i'll compare prices of heating pads and tiny electric heaters, and use one of them with an appliance timer.

if all else fails, i've got a sleeping bag that should do the trick. I might wrap it up a little sooner though. when you wrapped it up after four days were there still visual signs of fermentation, or had the krausen dropped already? i didn't think that fermentation would still be generating that much heat that far down the road.

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

you could always put it in a rubbermaid tub with a fish tank heater...

 

[theoriginalryan]

mine went good for 8 days, vigorous fermentation. Blew off the airlock on the FIRST day, so i had it on a blowoff tube the whole time.
went from 1.063 to 1.011

 

[Jamo99]

Thanks all. I ended up picking up a carboy warming belt. I've read good and bad stories about it, but the guys at my LHBS only stock things that they know work, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Was only $20 and I had a gift certificate, so I figured why not. I appreciate the ideas though.

I'll be putting it on about 5 or 6 days into fermentation. I'll try to remember to post when I taste my finished product.

Edit: Or when it malfunctions and I accidently burn the apartment down. (Think that'd be more likely with the space heater though)