Temperature advice

[Bigbob]

Hi guys and gals,

I'm getting looking at getting my first kit pretty soon, the wife says I can't store it in the house, but I have a lovely metal shed I can store it in, obviously there's going to be some temperature differences in there, is there anything I can do or use to keep the temperature st a constant for the fermentation?
Thanks

 

[DoctorMick]

Cheap and easy way to get started is to use a cheap plastic trug and a fish tank heater. Put your fermenting bucket in the trug, half fill with water and set the heater to about 19c. Obviously that doesn't help wth cooling so on really hot days add frozen bottles of water to the trug to bring the temp down. You'll need to have power in your shed for that mind, didn't think of that while I was writing!

 

[Bigbob]

yeah got power to the shed, that's a great help cheers

 

[Bigjas]

A more expensive way is to buy an old fridge, an inkbird 308 temp controller and a small tube heater. You can set the inkbird at whatever temp you like and it will keep it there +/- 1c. The good thing is you can pretty much leave it alone during fermentation.

Jas

 

[MyQul]

A more expensive way is to buy an old fridge, an inkbird 308 temp controller and a small tube heater. You can set the inkbird at whatever temp you like and it will keep it there +/- 1c. The good thing is you can pretty much leave it alone during fermentation.

Jas

This.^^^^

But you could not buy the inkbird and just use the fridge and temp tolerant yeast. One of the worse things for fermentation is large temp swings. It stresses the yeast and causes loads of off flavours. If you put the FV in a fridge it will be pretty insulated against temp swings. Use either mauribrew 514 ale yeast or mangrove jacks work horse yeast (which both have tolerance up to at least 30C) and you should be good unless it gets ridicoulously hot in your shed during the day

 

[Fin420]

I'm currently using a vivarium heat mat/mats hooked up to a thermostat. I've fixed the temperature sensor inside the fv by making an extra hole in the lid. Works a treat but doesn't control too much heat ( if the room temp is high all the thermostat can do is switch of the heat pads, not cool it down at all).

It's good for keeping a constant temp, but during the summer I Let the ambient temp do most of the work, setting the thermostat to 21 ish degrees just to stop things getting too cold during the evening. It can also work for a few fv's if you have a few heat pads and multiplug just be careful where you keep the sensor, and that your thermostat can handle the wattage of a few pads.

I was 30 quid for the thermostat and around 20 for the heat pads (it's dangerous to use the pads without the thermostat!!) a small 7w pad is more than enough for a dj, and a 20w pad more than enough for a 5 gallon bucket (as pictured)).

Hope this helps

 

[GlentoranMark]

You could use a brew belt or a small greenhouse heater?

Over the summer you'll be fine, cooling could maybe be your problem. Most beers except lagers are tolerant to a range of temperatures and kits are designed with this in mind.

 

[chewie]

Some metal sheds are like ovens on a hot day and freezers in the winter, you definitely want something to insulate between your FV and the shed interior that gives you better control over it.

 

[ericmark]

I would agree that an old fridge or fridge/freezer does stop temperature swings, but it also holds the heat inside typically I find without refrigeration a new brew will be between 2°C and 4°C hotter in the fridge than it would be in my garage, that's without and heating, so in the winter the fridge or old fridge/freezer works well, to heat mine I use an 8W bulb CFL at that, found that is ample. Started with a 18W demo underfloor heating tile, that was too big and stored too much heat so I got over shoot. The heater meeds to have low mass, the fish tank heater must be about the cheapest simplest way and hard to beat for heating.

But at the moment you need cooling so old bath or something to hold water make a tent with towels and have a fan to evaporate the water soaked up with capillary action and remove the latent heat with evaporation. But that is a lot of work and still hit and miss, however a tank of water due to it's mass will stop the temperature changing so fast so with the high temperature yeasts will work.

Until I had a fridge/freezer I stopped brewing in the summer. I would brew in house and store in shed.

 

[HebridesRob]

I don't think the brew fridge is expensive. You can get a working fridge off freecycle or gumtree for not very much, condition isn't too important as long as it works and fits your fermenting vessel (or even two if you're lucky).
You need some kind of heater, say a 45 watt tubular heater without a thermostat (doesn't matter too much what you use).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01BPA08P0/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
and a temperature controller.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01E74TEPG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
So outlay might be around £50, which isn't huge for what it gives you.

 

[Bigbob]

Thank you all for you're input, think I may go for the fridge option, very grateful for all the advice, top blokes!

 

[ericmark]

I don't think the brew fridge is expensive. You can get a working fridge off freecycle or gumtree for not very much, condition isn't too important as long as it works and fits your fermenting vessel (or even two if you're lucky).
You need some kind of heater, say a 45 watt tubular heater without a thermostat (doesn't matter too much what you use).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01BPA08P0/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
and a temperature controller.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01E74TEPG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
So outlay might be around ��£50, which isn't huge for what it gives you.

45W? must be a really rotten fridge to need such a large heater. I used 8W and fed it through a energy meter to see how much power it needed, in heart of winter with fridge/freezer in my integral garage unheated ambient temperature around zero and set temperature of 20ºC I required an average of 5W to maintain temperature, this is in a large fridge compartment which has been condemned because the insulation has failed. So from my experience I would say 10W is ample. The fish tank heater however has two advantages, it has a small mass so heats up and cools down quickly, and the thermostat is built in so the mark/space time is short. So a 40 or even 60W fish tank heater is OK, but any other heater needs to be around 10W maximum easy simple way is a bulb, then you can use larger bulb (10W) in winter and small bulb (2W) in summer.

If you want to keep price down the STC-1000 comes in at around �£14 but requires wiring and housing, depends on fridge or freezer used, it may fit in the fridge. I looked at the twin sockets, and socket box with extender with STC-1000 in the bottom and likely cost near the same as InkBird by time I added all the bits.

There are other similar looking thermostatic controllers, the STC-100 looks same as a glance but has a single change over relay rather than two relays, the MH1210A also looks nearly the same but has a single relay which can be used for heat or cool but not both together like the STC-1000 but are cheaper, if I was building it into the fridge I may use separate units one for heating and one for cooling. But in the main the STC-1000 is the unit to get if making your own controller.

I was surprised, an 18W underfloor heating tile would cause the fermentor to over shoot, but the 80W fridge/freezer motor caused not even 0.1ºC of over shoot. I think three reasons.
1) Fermenting makes heat so over heat could be due to fermenting not size of heater.
2) The tile was heavy so had quite a large mass storing the heat so even when switched off it was still heating.
3) The freezer has a fan to move the air from the evaporator to the freezer compartment, so when running it removes heat from fermentor better, and once it stops it stops moving the air as well so even if the evaporator is cold that lack of heat is not drawing heat from the fermentor.

Since I use a frost free freezer I can't comment about a simple fridge, but I would think having a fan in the fridge would help.

 

[terrym]

Thank you all for you're input, think I may go for the fridge option, very grateful for all the advice, top blokes!

My advice is to keep it simple to start with. The trug and fish tank heater option works well and is simple to set up and inexpensive. As your garage is outside you might need a 75w heater if you brew in the depths of winter. I use a 50w heater in my garage which is more than enough even though half the garage is 'outside'.
Your target is to brew your first pint of home brewed beer not get involved in domestic construction projects which comes with a brew fridge. That can come later as you get more involved with your new hobby.

 

[HebridesRob]

45W? must be a really rotten fridge to need such a large heater. I used 8W and fed it through a energy meter to see how much power it needed, in heart of winter with fridge/freezer in my integral garage unheated ambient temperature around zero and set temperature of 20ºC I required an average of 5W to maintain temperature, this is in a large fridge compartment which has been condemned because the insulation has failed. So from my experience I would say 10W is ample. The fish tank heater however has two advantages, it has a small mass so heats up and cools down quickly, and the thermostat is built in so the mark/space time is short. So a 40 or even 60W fish tank heater is OK, but any other heater needs to be around 10W maximum easy simple way is a bulb, then you can use larger bulb (10W) in winter and small bulb (2W) in summer.

If you want to keep price down the STC-1000 comes in at around ���£14 but requires wiring and housing, depends on fridge or freezer used, it may fit in the fridge. I looked at the twin sockets, and socket box with extender with STC-1000 in the bottom and likely cost near the same as InkBird by time I added all the bits.

There are other similar looking thermostatic controllers, the STC-100 looks same as a glance but has a single change over relay rather than two relays, the MH1210A also looks nearly the same but has a single relay which can be used for heat or cool but not both together like the STC-1000 but are cheaper, if I was building it into the fridge I may use separate units one for heating and one for cooling. But in the main the STC-1000 is the unit to get if making your own controller.

I was surprised, an 18W underfloor heating tile would cause the fermentor to over shoot, but the 80W fridge/freezer motor caused not even 0.1ºC of over shoot. I think three reasons.
1) Fermenting makes heat so over heat could be due to fermenting not size of heater.
2) The tile was heavy so had quite a large mass storing the heat so even when switched off it was still heating.
3) The freezer has a fan to move the air from the evaporator to the freezer compartment, so when running it removes heat from fermentor better, and once it stops it stops moving the air as well so even if the evaporator is cold that lack of heat is not drawing heat from the fermentor.

Since I use a frost free freezer I can't comment about a simple fridge, but I would think having a fan in the fridge would help.

It doesn't matter if the temperature inside the fridge overshoots by half a degree or so. You don't need that level of accuracy.

 

[ericmark]

My advice is to keep it simple to start with. The trug and fish tank heater option works well and is simple to set up and inexpensive. As your garage is outside you might need a 75w heater if you brew in the depths of winter. I use a 50w heater in my garage which is more than enough even though half the garage is 'outside'.
Your target is to brew your first pint of home brewed beer not get involved in domestic construction projects which comes with a brew fridge. That can come later as you get more involved with your new hobby.

I am assuming your meaning without a brew fridge? In early days I brewed with fermentor on a plastic stool so it was about 18 inches off the floor, that was around the minimum required to syphon into bottles.

I used body warmers over the fermentor with the air lock through the neck of body warmers, and a under floor heating tile 18W which I would manually switch on and off to maintain around the 20°C. And I did get it wrong from time to time and did not unplug on time and hit 26°C before unplugging. Not best of beers but drinkable, thermometer was simple stick on strip. It was more of a problem in the winter as it took so long to warm up I would forget.

The simple fish tank heater must be about the best idea, thermostat control and you can put as many body warmers or coats on the fermentor as you want with no fire risk. The simple bath of cold water also likely best way to cool if there is no fridge.

 

[The Idiot]

I'm surprised no one else has suggested this, but have you considered a new wife?

 

[ericmark]

I'm surprised no one else has suggested this, but have you considered a new wife?

Unfortunately my religion will not permit it, and even those that do, the old wife needs to give permission for you to have a new one, and you have to show you have the means to support two wives.

There is also a problem with British law, they don't allow you to have a second wife although the Marquis of Bath it seems has wifelets but hard enough with one wife never mind two so I will just stick with the one I have.

 

[Inkbird]

With a heater/beer belt and Inkbird ITC-308(thermostat)/ITC-310T(timer thermostat),then it goes.