Tackling the British winter: working water bath setup!

[Do_you_realise]

Hey,

I posted a while back with concerns over extract brewing in our freezing rented property in the UK. Thankfully a few helpful people on here and http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/ suggested using a water bath and a cheap aquarium heater to keep my FV at the desired temperature. Thought I would post a follow-up!

I used a 23L bucket type FV (which cost £8.50 from Wilkinson's) in a water bath - basically a flexible 42L garden trub bucket (which cost £5, again from Wilko's) and an aquarium heater to heat the water bath.

I used a 100W Aquarium heater which cost me about £15 at the time from Amazon and works a treat.

PHOTOS: http://imgur.com/a/qcpSb

The liquid you can see in the FV in the linked in the album above is just water for now.

Even down to an ambient temperature in our garage of 2°C the setup manages to maintain an internal temperature of 20°C with no problems.

One strange aspect of this setup is the temperature markings of the heater appear to be off (identified in the album). Very strange. I found that about 25°C on the dial equated to about 20°C in the water bath and the FV.

I hope to start a kit shortly using this exact setup.

Thought this might be helpful to someone!

 

[oldbloke]

I really ought to clean mine out and get it going again.
I think the wife's getting bored with the 6 demis that have been in the dining room corner for 2 months.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=14869&hilit=waterbath

 

[mickthetrick]

i use the same and its a pretty good system. trub as water bath and fish tank heater in it. works a treat. after i barrel the contents i put the cleaned fv in the trub and put the keg on top of the fv. if i get any leaks/spillages it just collects in the trub so no mess on the floor. :thumb:

 

[StuAlban]

I think I need to get something like this set up for my next batch. One question though - presumably the FV can't have a tap on it (a closed one!) as there is some risk of contamination of the wort from the warm bath water. I always brew in a FV with a tap and bottle directly from there (with a bottling stick) rather than racking to secondary. Given that I've heard it recommended to sanitise the tap before bottling even if the FV has been standing on a table and only exposed to air it must mean that the tap isn't 100% sealed?

 

[mickthetrick]

i don't have a tap on my fv but i would think you could still use one with a tap just spray it with some sanitizer before you transfer

 

[ChrisRedWills]

so £5 for the outside container £15 for the aquerium heater then you need another themomiter because the aquerium heater doesnt give a true reading
I think I'll stick with the old quilt wrapped round the fv :

 

[bobsbeer]

One strange aspect of this setup is the temperature markings of the heater appear to be off (identified in the album). Very strange. I found that about 25°C on the dial equated to about 20°C in the water bath and the FV.

Keep an eye on this as it will be dependent on the ambient temp. So as the weather warms the heater will be better able to keep up.

 

[oldbloke]

I think I need to get something like this set up for my next batch. One question though - presumably the FV can't have a tap on it (a closed one!) as there is some risk of contamination of the wort from the warm bath water. I always brew in a FV with a tap and bottle directly from there (with a bottling stick) rather than racking to secondary. Given that I've heard it recommended to sanitise the tap before bottling even if the FV has been standing on a table and only exposed to air it must mean that the tap isn't 100% sealed?

Sanitise the heater and cable carefully and let it sit in the FV.

 

[Do_you_realise]

so £5 for the outside container £15 for the aquerium heater then you need another themomiter because the aquerium heater doesnt give a true reading
I think I'll stick with the old quilt wrapped round the fv :

Good point but in my case I already had the thermometer...and you don't really need a fancy digital one to do the same job :)

 

[Do_you_realise]

One strange aspect of this setup is the temperature markings of the heater appear to be off (identified in the album). Very strange. I found that about 25°C on the dial equated to about 20°C in the water bath and the FV.

Keep an eye on this as it will be dependent on the ambient temp. So as the weather warms the heater will be better able to keep up.

That was my initial thought, that the discrepancy was due to the heater not being able to cope with the cold temperatures. However when I turned the heater up to 27 the water bath rose to 25 when the ambient temp went down to 0. So I think it's just either calibrated 2 degrees out, or the fact that the water was not circulating as pointed out earlier in the thread.

 

[matthew_pullin]

Sanitise the heater and cable carefully and let it sit in the FV.

What are people's thoughts on doing this? will it not create hot spots in your FV? Will this have any affect on the fermentation? Iv been waiting for this to come up for a while i bought a heater off amazon for £8 and was torn between the two methods. I was leaning towards submerging the heater and running the cable through the hole for the airlock. I can live without the O'so satisfying glug glug sound if it produces better brews in winter. The ambient temp in my brew room (2nd bed room) is about 11 deg so i need something to help it along. Im too tight to leave the heating on :nono:

 

[AutoManics]

Sanitise the heater and cable carefully and let it sit in the FV.

What are people's thoughts on doing this? will it not create hot spots in your FV? Will this have any affect on the fermentation? Iv been waiting for this to come up for a while i bought a heater off amazon for £8 and was torn between the two methods. I was leaning towards submerging the heater and running the cable through the hole for the airlock. I can live without the O'so satisfying glug glug sound if it produces better brews in winter. The ambient temp in my brew room (2nd bed room) is about 11 deg so i need something to help it along. Im too tight to leave the heating on :nono:

I have the heater in the water bath and a digi thermometer probe in the brew for accurate reading, works really well.

 

[bottler]

I think I need to get something like this set up for my next batch. One question though - presumably the FV can't have a tap on it (a closed one!) as there is some risk of contamination of the wort from the warm bath water. I always brew in a FV with a tap and bottle directly from there (with a bottling stick) rather than racking to secondary. Given that I've heard it recommended to sanitise the tap before bottling even if the FV has been standing on a table and only exposed to air it must mean that the tap isn't 100% sealed?

Sanitise the heater and cable carefully and let it sit in the FV.

Thats exactly what i do :thumb: