Heating for garage fermenting?!

carlreid

Hi guys,

I've been making ciders for a while now, but looking to move out of my cupboard and into a garage to upscale a little! I was just wondering if anyone had any tips relating to temperature control. Up til now i've always just fermented at room temperature, not sure what's best on the market (and what's really necessary) in order to keep everything running smoothly.

Any help would be great, cheers!

BUDFORCE

I use the immersion style heater like this:

http://www.home-brew-online.com/equipment-c40/electrim-te75-immersion-heater-p721

The heater itself has a built in thermostat, and the device has a little gauge at the top that you adjust accordingly. Once you have it set correctly you never need to change it again.

You could buy one of those optional temperature controllers but I really dont think you need one for this type of heating solution as it already has an in built termostat.

I brew in my garage which is completely unheated, and this will keep my brew at a nice even 22-24c even when its minus 3 outside. I have one of those standard 25 litre plastic ones, and I don't insulate my primary fermentation vessel at all. I have been brewing for over 2 years and get really good results.

I think the thing I love about this one, is once you have it setup right, you never has to mess with it again, just stick in it and forget about it.

carlreid

Thanks Budforce!

How have you attached this to a 25litre plastic bucket, just bored your own hole to put the bung in? So far I have been using 2/3 buckets to ferment with indoors, but getting one of these new fastferment conical fermenters to try for christmas and just realised how difficult that could be to heat! That product seems really good for getting an even temperature compared to some of the other reviews and ideas i've been reading. Just wondering if I were to drill a new hole in both the conical lid and the lid for the existing 25l buckets whether there'd be any problems achieving a completely closed seal.

http://www.home-brew-online.com/equipment-c40/fast-ferment-conical-fermenter-p2401

BUDFORCE

Aha, I refer you to this thread:

http://homebrewonline.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1105/modified-my-heater#latest

BUDFORCE

Also, if you are going to replace the standard bung, use bathroom mastic or silicone sealant. Glue gun was not ideal and was pretty messy. I will at some stage dig out all the glue and replace with silicone.

carlreid

Great, very helpful thanks!

WierdFish

Or, if you have space, you might want to consider a fermenting fridge. Heated for fermenting, cooled for conditioning.

Plenty of online blogs about them, this one is on this forum.