tube heater or immersion heater with STC1000

[DruScriver]

I'm not far off building a fermentation fridge and i was wondering what the best heating source would be. The fridge will be a small chest freezer big enough to fit a 25L FV in.

Most of the STC1000 builds I've seen use a small tube heater. Would an immersion heater be a better way of heating the brew or is it too slow to heat up?

 

[dennisking]

I use one of these never had a problem.

 

[brewtim]

Would an immersion heater be a better way of heating the brew or is it too slow to heat up?

With an immersion heater you may run the risk of infection. Many use tube heaters. I use a brew belt with an STC.

There is always a third option :mrgreen:

 

[PD]

tubular heaters are clean and efficient and safe. Available in many lengths to suit the situation, I cannot see any reason to use anything ele

 

[nicknoxx]

Ceramic heaters are also available. And slightly cheaper.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/400471891579

Sometimes there's a fourth option too.

 

[PD]

first time I've seen those, I wonder how efficient they are for heating an area the size of a fridge....? but they look fine.

 

[pob]

Either tube heater/ceramic bulb type or immersion heaters work fine, as long as you put the STC sensor in the same medium as the heater, i.e. sensor into wort with immersion heater or sensor taped to outside of FV if using air heater.

This prevents massive build-up of heat as the mass of liquid will take a much longer time to react to heat source (lag), e.g. with sensor in wort, tube/ceramic heater keeps heating surrounding air way past the 18-20C, but the wort is only slowly increasing/catching up due to mass of liquid, or sensor taped to side with immersion heater, wort heats up but outside temp takes longer to show change (immersion heaters generally have thermostats so extra bit of security). In both cases sensor should not be directly beside heat source.

first time I've seen those, I wonder how efficient they are for heating an area the size of a fridge....? but they look fine.

Oh yea, there very efficient, too efficient sometimes.

Learnt the above lesson not once, but twice on same brew (STC connected to fridge & 60W ceramic heater, temp sensor in FV). Air temp inside fridge +40C as door opened, ceramic heater was too close to side of fridge, melted plastic/insulation. Moved heater (after clean-up) to top of FV came back a couple of hours later, top/ceiling of fridge nearly bubbling. STC still showing set temp, wtf? Realised that everything was working fine, just that the sensor was measuring the wort temp not the air temp, therefore heater kept working until wort caught up.

40w tube heater going to be used next, with fan & sensor taped to side of FV.

 

[DruScriver]

Cheers guys. Tube heater it is then. As with all of us this is probably just the start of a larger build. Shiny things to look at next.

 

[danb]

I use a 40w light bulb in both fridges and they work great.and for £2 each fridge.

 

[Colin]

I use an immersion heater in a coke bottle in my fridge with the sensor fastened to the fv in bubble wrap. It seems to stay at the correct temperature no problem. I did it this way as I already had an immersion heater (£9.50 from Argos) Waste not want not

 

[loady]

Im of the camp of sensor in the air space...with the fridge left shut, which ideally you dont want to keep opening the door once its off, the wort will stabilise with the ambient temp within, it matters not if you have the door open for a few mins as it would take a while for the mass of the wort to react and once the fridge door is shut again it takes little time to reach the set temp again..i just found that measuring the wort temp you would get overshoot unless you tweaked the fek out of the offset