Ok, i'm going to try natural lagering...

[ALPS]

Brilliant!!! I wonder if a fish tank heater can maintain water in a stryofoam cooler @ 52 degrees, this could provide PERFECT lagering throughout the winter!!!!!

52 may be a good temperature to ferment at, but you'll need to be much colder to lager at. Get as close to 32 as you can and hold it there.

I did a "natural" lager in my basement last winter (I'm just to the west of you, Mike). I put my carboy in a large tub filled with water back in the corner, and every 12 hours I'd rotate water bottles between the tub and the chest freezer.

Sure, it was work (5minutes 2 times a day) but I kept the lagering temp at 36-38 degrees and the beer came out as clear as if it were filtered and pretty tasty.

I may have to do another one this year...

 

[Mike-H]

This i'm not worried about... I am concerned about fermentation temp's only, so if I can get a fish tank heater to go to 52 degree's i'm good. I keep my chest freezer slightly below 32 degrees, pretty much giving a liquid temp of 32 degrees. So after fermentation I will move it in there....

52 may be a good temperature to ferment at, but you'll need to be much colder to lager at. Get as close to 32 as you can and hold it there.

I did a "natural" lager in my basement last winter (I'm just to the west of you, Mike). I put my carboy in a large tub filled with water back in the corner, and every 12 hours I'd rotate water bottles between the tub and the chest freezer.

Sure, it was work (5minutes 2 times a day) but I kept the lagering temp at 36-38 degrees and the beer came out as clear as if it were filtered and pretty tasty.

I may have to do another one this year...

 

[Pumbaa]

about the only way to get a fish tank heater to work at 52degrees is maybe if you jerry-rig it up to one of those external fridge thermostats

 

[dougjones31]

You can buy a simple rheostat or potentiometer and put it inline with the power and then you simply dial down how many amps is available to the heater. I would imagine that the heating element uses DC. So you would have to hook up the pot after the AC to DC converter.

Pots only cost a couple dollars at radio shack. Check the amperage of the pump and make sure you get a potentiometer that will handle that much current.

If you are not too electrically inclined....


You could go buy one of those dimmer type light switches and wire an outlet to it and then plug the fish tank heater into it. Then you simply turn it down till it maintains the temp you want.

You can get one at Lowes for @$10. Get a $5 extension cord and cut it in half and wire the wall side to the switch then cut the plug off of the plug half and use that wire to go from the dimmer to a $2 outlet.

 

[Mike-H]

Doug, thanks for the idea. This generates a constant power though right? So the idea is to put in exactly the amount of heat that it is losing on a continous basis using the potentiomerter. This is the closest so far and would probably work with minimal adjustments, however i'm still holding out for an actual thermostat control or modification to them.

 

[dougjones31]

I bought my Johnson Control digitals for $60 delivered. I cannot remember the website I bought them from, but that was a great deal.

The control can be switched to turn on power if it drops below a point or if it rise above a point.

The Falls here in SC are weird. it can get down to 40 at night and 80 during the day.

So I use 2 johnson controls on a freezer in my garage. One to turn the freezer on if the temp rises and one to cut a small heater, inside the freezer, on if the temps drop. I stager the two setpoint by 5 degrees with a 2 degree varience so that the freezer and heater do not fight each other. 5 degree control is good enough.

You guys that have real winters can get by with one controller on a heater with a garage freezer.

freezer set for 55 degrees with a 2 degree varience. When the temp hits 55 the freezer comes on till the temp goes down to 53. The heater is set to 50 with a 2 degree vaience so when temps drop to 50 degrees the heater comes on and warms up to 52 degrees and then cuts off.

 

[dougjones31]

BUT...you can take the potentiometer/dimmer idea and go one step farther. For about $20 you can.....

You can buy a temp sensor(Diode) for a few bucks. It actually changes resistance as the temp changes. You can wire this into circuit so that the resistance change actually will control the amperage of the circuit which will lower and raise the amperage to the heating element as the temp changes. You would not have a temp indicator but the circuit will allow the temp to be constant at whatever you set it for, so you could use a seperate thermometer to calibrate the circuit. It would be just like the knob type controllers that you see advertised.

But I am an Electronics Engineer, so this is simple for me to do. This is all a Digital Johnson Control is except they built in a digital thermometer and the up/down circuitry. I cannot build it as cheap as I bought the ones that I got. Adding the digital thermometer and other circuitry cost @ $70 for parts.

So spend $20 or $60??? I chose the easy route and just bought the Johnson Control Digital. .

 

[dougjones31]

If you want to skip the freezer and continue on with your "Natural Lagering" using the fish tank heater. Then you can use a thermostat out of a broken fridge to control the power to the heater. That should be simple to find. Remeber to get the temp sensor, you can wrap it in a plastic bag and stick it in the water of your buffer. Do not trust the sensor to be waterproof. Wiring it is simple there are only 3 wires. Hot-cold-ground.....and the hot and cold can be mixed up without a problem since it is AC. Ground wire is usually green.

I have seen $15 thermostats at lowes or home depot. They are cheap but they do not go down low enough to do any good. Most of them only go down to 60 degrees. I have been wondering If I can modfy them to work at lower temps.

 

[MattD]

Regarding immersing the heater element of the aquarium heater into the wort itself, I would think you'd be taking a big, but manageable, sanitation risk. The thing I would worry more about is the potential of caramelizing sugars in the wort. I don't know how hot those heaters get, but I'd hate to have an element poking down into the beer periodically scalding the portion in contact with it.

 

[dougjones31]

Scalding would take much higher temps than the fish tank heater gets up too. They probably do not get hotter than 80 degrees. They work by constantly adding enegrgy to the water a little at a time.....not all at once.

Ever heard of people frying their goldfish with a tank heater?

I didn't think so........

 

[Mike-H]

Man i'm so f'ing frustrated. I cant BELIEVE they dont make a fish heater that goes below 65 degrees. All of the industrial immersion heaters kinda suck too. I tore an old one I had up and it appears to be controlled by a small microcontroller, so modifications would be nearly impossible.

 

[Mike-H]

OK, I purchased it.... $75.00 SHIPPED. I know you could buy a fridge at this price, but for the convenience and electricity savings I think its worth it. Plus its always handy to have a temp controller around... Here's my new setup....

http://www.customaquatic.com/customaquatic/brandcategory.asp?brandID=WB&catID=he (Won Brothers Digital Temp Control 32F-10xF $45.00)

250 Watt Fish tank heater

Carboy submersed in a stryfoam cooler

After talking with the "fish guy" I realized that you can plug 800 Watts of fish tank heaters into this... So it will allow you to have 3 lager's going at the same time... You can also use it indoors to control temps at 70 degrees... I think its a $75.00 well spent.

 

[chillHayze]

You may need some form of circulator to get the heated water to flow evenly around the carboy. There is a $10 fishtank product that could do this called a powerhead. It's just a little submersible pump. That might not be needed if the unit is not activating that much anyway. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[Pumbaa]

I'm not trying to discourage you but your project is starting to get pretty involved . . . You're starting to end up having a lot of little parts that if one fails you could end up with a huge PITA and a ruined batch of brew

 

[Porter fan]

OK, I purchased it.... $75.00 SHIPPED. I know you could buy a fridge at this price, but for the convenience and electricity savings I think its worth it. Plus its always handy to have a temp controller around... Here's my new setup....

http://www.customaquatic.com/customaquatic/brandcategory.asp?brandID=WB&catID=he (Won Brothers Digital Temp Control 32F-10xF $45.00)

250 Watt Fish tank heater

Carboy submersed in a stryfoam cooler

After talking with the "fish guy" I realized that you can plug 800 Watts of fish tank heaters into this... So it will allow you to have 3 lager's going at the same time... You can also use it indoors to control temps at 70 degrees... I think its a $75.00 well spent.

People call me a fanatic about brewing... Buy a chest freezer and be done with it all your thinking is making my head heart...

 

[Mike-H]

People call me a fanatic about brewing... Buy a chest freezer and be done with it all your thinking is making my head heart...

I HAVE a chest freezer lol

 

[b,rock-bock]

Sounds good to me. I just started using the outside air temp to do "natural" lagering. I have a few Ice Cubes and I just put some water in them and set the carboy in them and let them sit outside. (covered up of course) So far the flavors are excellent, I havent tasted them on draft or bottle yet so will see how that goes. My digital thermometer reads a consistant 36-42 degrees with little flux and I live in the Pac northwest as well.