TBH, I'm far from being an expert on brewing automation - I just used what I had at hand, in the form of the obsolete Grainfather controller. Gather other opinions if you can, but it looks to me like the Inkbird 308S would do the job, and handle cooling too if and when you want to add that. There's one here. Other controllers and resellers are available: I have no affiliations!
Err - Slight misunderstanding: I don't actually sell them, nor anything else for that matter! Where I said in my previous post - "There's one here " - the "here" is a hyperlink to a shop that sells them. I guess the blue hyperlink doesn't show too well against the green'ish background!
No worries. As I mentioned earlier, if you're into diy, the STC-1000 controllers are around £10 on Ebay. Some are even less than that. But you'll need to add a box, power cords, plugs and sockets to that price.
I used one of those heat mats for my very first ferment recently, i sat my fv on a frame about half inch off the mat and put a cardboard box over the whole fv with a hole cut out to see the airlock and one for the temp gauge so I didn’t have to disturb it at all and put an old duvet over the whole thing at night i used one of those timer plugs to turn the heat mat on and off as i found it too warm to be on all the time. It kept the temp at a steady 20-22° for the first week. I have since set up a fridge with an inkbird 308 and I’m using the heat mat in the bottom to keep my first barrel at 19° for a week or 2.
I have a reptile heat pad in my fridge with a inkbird 308 thermostat to regulate the temp and it’s holding nicely at 19°C.
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