Brew belt to hot!!

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

glove81

Active Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
87
Reaction score
28
Just bought a brew belt and made up a kit of youngs bitter.

Its been foaming away and I've been worrying it was to hot. Right enough, I sanitised a thermometer and the brew was at 27 degrees. So i switched off the belt.

Having read posts here about belts I know to high can cause problems with off flavours and fluctuating temps can be bad too. I plan on getting a timer from the diy shop and have the belt an hour on an hour off, does anyone have any thoughts or experience doing the same.
 
I have never used one but I think the position that it is on the FV makes a difference to how hot it makes the beer. Alternatively you could use it in conjunction with a STC-1000.
 
Most rooms in a centrally heated house will average around 18-20c I wouldn't bother with the belt.
When I was younger I fermented in the airing cupboard above the hot water tank fueled by a roaring coal fire and I thought the warmer the better...but it isn't....

BB
 
Our home isn't the warmest but in this mild snap the air temp around the boiler (under the stairs along with my FV) is about 17, I got the belt expecting a cold snap (here in Highlands) which hasn't materialised. When we are out and the heating is off the house has been as cold as 10 so I thought the belt would be needed.

If it was a lager I wouldn't be so bothered but a bitter I figured would be better a bit higher.

I'm going to leave it off until temp is low, the student engineer in me feels the need for an experiment on maintaining a constant temp with a brew belt. (not with actual brew though, will find a substitute)
 
I'm assuming it's not going to be undrinkable having had a warm start maybe just not as nice as could have been.
 
The height determines the temperature. If you put it right down the bottom, the FV will get hotter than if you put it a few cms below the top, and so on.

If you don't need it at all, I could do with it :) my house is colder than a cold something-or-other. And the hot water cylinder has ultra modern insulation so you can't even tell it's on, no heat loss from that.
 
My brewery averages about 17C in winter. I use a brew belt, a timer and a stick on thermometer ( not terribly accurate I know) to maintain the temperature at 19-20C. It takea a bit of trial and error but once you get the hang of it, it works very well.
 
I always use brew belts in the winter months and don't have problems with off flavours.

If your room is really cold then place the belt about 2 inches from the bottom of the FV.

My room's about 15 degrees so I move the belt to just over halfway up the FV.

The instructions should tell you how to use one as you can vary the temperature quite successfully.
 
That is the reason I decided against the brew belt, no thermostat, I went with the aquarium heater in water bath option, only £7 and it has a thermostat so the desired temperature is easily maintained :D
 
glove81 said:
I plan on getting a timer from the diy shop and have the belt an hour on an hour off, does anyone have any thoughts or experience doing the same.
You can probably get the desired stable temerature from turning it on and off just two or three times a day. It takes quite a lot of energy to warm 23 litres up by a degree - 1000 litres would take 1KWh.

Alternatively you could put some insulation between the belt and the FV, maybe just under part of the belt.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top