Controlling fermentation temperature

I am looking into making my own. At the moment I just drink. I get the wort making aspect, however I keep reading that fermentation is the critical stage. Problem is, how do you control temperature?

My house isn't warm. Plus I was thinking of using a outhouse at the bottom of the garden instead. I have looked into freezers and I looked into a temperature control unit for fermetor. Can anyone give any advice. Seems it needs a lot of money, which given I will be buying a lot of stuff, may make it too expensive.

Any advice as to how you control the fermentation temp with your brew would be appreciated.

Hi Boris, there is a lot of advice on the Forum on this subject, in the Beer making Equipment are.

Try this one, for instance:

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=51855


Good luck with homebrewing, it's a great hobby. :thumb:

As Slid says a brewfridge. I don't think it would be very expensive if you could get a cheap (or free off gumtree/freecylce) fridge. You just need an STC (think that's what its called) then. Another option is a fermentation chamber.

I'm about to build a fermentation fridge, and I don't envisage it costing too much. You can usually pick up an under counter for free on Gumtree. Then you just need a tube heater for about £16 from Toolstation or Ebay, and a temp control unit.

Get your name in the hat for the Inkbird give away on this forum if you haven't already. There's a link to it at the top of the page titled ITC-308 UK Giveaway. If you're not lucky enough to win one you can get them on Amazon for about £30.

I sometimes use an Electrim 75 immersion heater when it's cold. It goes inside the FV and mine keeps a pretty constant 20°C. I'm using it now cause it's bloody freezing up North!

Or you could try and win a control unit:

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59601

if your ideal fermentation spot is consistantly cool, then you can simply lag your fermentation bucket and rely on the yeast to warm up the brew as they get busy, they can increase the wort temp upto 5c on their own..

if consistantly too cool then a waterbath to sit the FV in heated by an aquarium type water heater can work very well..

as said most folk get the donor fridge for a brewfridge project as a freebie or local ebay gumtree bargain which makes it an ideal solution.

some folk in warm climates have built insulation board boxes cooled by a pc fan blowing over frozen bottles of water which get exchanged daily..

others use the shelf chillers with recirculation pumps to pump a chilled coolant throuh a heat exchanging coil submersed in the beer or simply wrapped arround the FV behind insulation

so start scouring local freecycle and gumtree/ebay pages and be patient for a few weeks and im sure you will be rewarded with a brewfridge its a simple set n relax job, and is the best option if you can accommodate it.

a brew fridge with an STC controller and tube heater is the ideal solution, would like one myself but bit limited for space.

I brew in the garage so need to heat the FV and have gone the 'fermenting bin sitting in a water bath with an aquarium heater keeping the water bath (and the FV) at the right temp' route. Quick, cheap, easy solution while you work on the brew fridge.

The brew fridge is a better solution and as long as the fridge works you can use it to heat and cool - my setup just heats so works well in consistently cool areas where you need to lift the FV temp above the 'ambient' temp of the area.

Plastic storage tub from Ikea, Aquarium heater (100watt) was about £9 off ebay I think. I cut some foam signboard at work to cover the water bath to reduce heat loss and evaporation. I pop a towel over the top of the FV to reduce heat loss off the lid. Here it is:

Mine's a larder fridge with a 60w greenhouse tube header. The STC1000 keeps it at the required temperature.

Works a treat and you can set to crash cool temperature and switch of the heater output.

A temporary solution would be a fermentation chamber. I made an economy version out of some lengths of tongue and groove board that were left over from a DIY project a few years ago. I lined it with bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard and polystyrene ceiling tiles (all just lying around the garage). An incandescent bulb in an old tin with a lid (make sure it's big enough to get the bulb holder and bulb inside without touching the sides) provides enough heat to keep it at 16-18 degrees. Make sure no light can escape from the tin.
I use an STC-1000 temperature controller - about �£13 online - fitted into a cheap sandwich box.
Once the air temperature warms up in the Spring, you should consider a fridge.
Spapro's solution is awesome. I was going to try that with a deep trug for the water bath before deciding on the fermentation chamber.

Hi, I would love a brew fridge but as a beginner I've started my 3rd and 4th brews using a water filled toy box and an aquarium heater (£7 ebay) and it's working well.


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View attachment uploadfromtaptalk1452968614288.jpg

Out in my garage I have found that the problem is keeping stuff warm rather than keeping it cool.

I use a section of metal/chipboard shelving, that sits on a workbench and is enclosed with a combination of chipboard, an old BBQ cover and some reject blankets that hang down the front to allow access.

It can accommodate:

o Two FV's. or,

o One FV and a Keg. or,

o 40 x 500ml bottles and One FV or Keg.

Temperature "control" is vary basic.

I have a lump of four-by-two with two switches and two light bulb sockets attached. I keep two 20W bulbs, two 40W bulbs and two 60W bulbs available for use.

I can maintain a temperature of +/- 3 degrees by checking twice a day and either switching bulbs on or off, or by changing out the bulbs for higher or lower wattage.

At the moment (freezing cold out there!) I have 40 x 500ml bottles at the secondary fermentation stage so to maintain temperature I have 1 x 60W and 1 x 20W bulb lit.

boristhespie said:

I am looking into making my own. At the moment I just drink. I get the wort making aspect, however I keep reading that fermentation is the critical stage. Problem is, how do you control temperature?

My house isn't warm. Plus I was thinking of using a outhouse at the bottom of the garden instead. I have looked into freezers and I looked into a temperature control unit for fermetor. Can anyone give any advice. Seems it needs a lot of money, which given I will be buying a lot of stuff, may make it too expensive.

Any advice as to how you control the fermentation temp with your brew would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

I use a roll matt when temps really dip outside, seems to work for me.
Much much cheapness my friend.:lol:

Thanks guys. Much to think about. Ta!

Just a quicky!

After reading about temperature controllers on another Thread and thinking about the mantra I used to drum into sprog engineers (i.e. DON'T design anything that needs someone to fiddle with it to make it work!) I bought one of these last night!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IJ0F2OW/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I checked out a load of YouTube videos to make sure that it will do what I want and decided that it was a "must have"; and at �£13.99 with almost 100% 5-star reviews one of the cheapest bits of kit in my armoury!

Spapro said:

a brew fridge with an STC controller and tube heater is the ideal solution, would like one myself but bit limited for space.

I brew in the garage so need to heat the FV and have gone the 'fermenting bin sitting in a water bath with an aquarium heater keeping the water bath (and the FV) at the right temp' route. Quick, cheap, easy solution while you work on the brew fridge.

The brew fridge is a better solution and as long as the fridge works you can use it to heat and cool - my setup just heats so works well in consistently cool areas where you need to lift the FV temp above the 'ambient' temp of the area.

Plastic storage tub from Ikea, Aquarium heater (100watt) was about �£9 off ebay I think. I cut some foam signboard at work to cover the water bath to reduce heat loss and evaporation. I pop a towel over the top of the FV to reduce heat loss off the lid. Here it is:

Click to expand...

That's a much nicer version of what I did last winter when I was brewing in a cold walk in cupboard. Mine is more like Paydoogs - in fact it is exactly the same as his except for colour. Since I was indoors, and the ambient temperature of the cupboard was about 17C I only used a 25 watt heater which was more than adequate to cope with the heat loss from the part of the FV that was out of the water - about 80% of it in fact. It was very effective and very cheap as I already had the storage box lying in a cupboard. Brew fridge is ideal of course because you can use it in summer too.