Fermentation temperature

[steve123]

I’ve been trying to find the answer to this without success.

How do small breweries maintain temperature of their fermenters. I have a brew fridge so can manage temperature control on a small scale. When a brewery ferments I know they have cooling jackets or cooling coils in the fermenter to ensure they don’t go over a certain temperature, and whilst a brew is fermenting it generates heat, but how do they maintain heat after fermentation is complete and whilst they are conditioning the beer?

I ask the question as I am looking to get a larger conical style fermenter that will be too big for the fridge

 

[simon12]

Ones I have seen have a cooling jacket usually built in with stainless or wood over it and chilled by maxi chillers. They never seem to need heating even after fermentation I think it just takes to long for the mass of it to get cold in an insulated vessel.

 

[Clint]

By commercial breweries conditioning,keeping the beer warm,do you mean carbonating?

 

[steve123]

Thanks for replies. No I didn’t mean carbonating, I was thinking along the lines of high strength Belgian beers that take several weeks to fully develop. If they were in the fermenters for 4 weeks I was just interested how they would maintain temperatures in the range of 20c+. Appreciate that large volumes would maintain some temperature but would it not start to drop off.
Would they maintain room temperature in a similar range to the fermentation temperature they need

 

[simon12]

Sorry I had to do something so my previous post was cut short. I think at over 200l and certainly 1000+ the vessels are well insulated and I think it would take months for the beer temp to drop much. But the breweries I have seen all cask the beer before fermentation has completely finished so it wouldn't matter anyway. The 1BBL brewery I briefly part owned had a radiator under the 200l fermeters connected to the temp control but I don't think the ever kicked in even in a poorly insulated and otherwise unheated building in the middle of winter.