Temperature controlled ferment-o-rator!

[bellebouche]

Stumbled across a small 110l chest freezer at the recycle centre a few weeks ago whilst dropping off some old junk. Who ever had left it there had taken the old freezer guts out of it but otherwise it was in remarkable condition. - perfect candidate for a ferment-o-rator!

I had designs on buying a small ebay temp controller and some kind of small resistive heating circuit but thought I'd try the concept out first. I stuck a small 100w aquarium heater into a 5l glass fermentation vessel. Set it for the early 20's. It stabilised in remarkably quick time and has maintained an even temp for 24 hrs now... only small +/- 0.1c changes when I've been checking. I've filled the ferment-o-rator with a 20l brew, a spare 5l glass vessel full of water and topped up with some bottle-conditioning beers that are just getting their fizz on. There's a lot of thermal mass in that lot so I guess that helps a lot.

So, for a grand total spend of €3.80 for the heater (it has its own calibrated temp control knob and just a simple bitmetallic stat) and half an hour cleaning time I've now cracked my winter fermentation blues and have a large capacity bottle maturation vessel. Very pleased.

I'll be along with pics shortly!

[bellebouche]

In all it's glory...



I'd filled it with the 5 litre 'heating' bottle - just the Aquarium heater and a cork bung to stop any undue moisture getting out. I put in another old gallon demi-jon for thermal mass and I've stuck the Scintillant D'or in there to finish a week in secondary and I'd stuffed a few bottles of an 80/- that's conditioning in to see how that goes.

Looking forward to having the ability to brew ales and do some controlled bottle conditioning over the winter now that I wouldn't be able to achieve otherwise.

[Jolum]

Nice.