Bottling from a brew fridge

[Otto Von Blotto]

Ok so the heater pad not touching is enough to keep the temp warm enough for ferment?

 

Yeah, well it should be. It's basically the same principle as when the fridge is cooling - it just changes the temperature of the air which in turn obviously keeps whatever is stored in it at that temp.

[AndrewH42]

For the past 5 or 6 months I have been brewing here in Albury with a brew fridge which I constantly changed frozen 2lt bottles of water to keep a reasonably constant temp (apart from when I turned the fridge on and forgot about it[pouty] but that is another story).2 Weeks ago I had enough of frozen bottles and the ambient temp of the brew room has steadied off at around 30c so I bought one of these

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Digital-Temperature-Controller-Beer-Fermentation-Wired-Fridge-Freezer-Thermostat-/290868570711?pt=AU_Building_Materials&hash=item43b91e2a57

I have set this unit @ 18c and it has been running for a week. This is where the chef in me comes out I have now set up a temp check sheet that I fill in twice daily. In the brew fridge I have a glass of water with my thermometer( A milk frothing thermometer)and I also have a digital temp thingy that has a probe which sits in the fridge and it also tells me the ambient temp of the room. So far so good, one thing I have noticed is the 2 brews in the fridge have a far bigger krausen and it has lasted longer...time will tell.

My two cents worth.

Cheers.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I noticed with my 196 Pale Ale that the krausen was bigger than I'm used to when using US-05 yeast. It was the first batch I have had actual proper temp control on, i.e. the fridge.

 

Where do you put the temp probe from your controller when its in use?

[AndrewH42]

Hey OVB,

I put the temp probe between the two FV's there is about 15cm gap. So it hangs off the "rack". Yes it is an ambient temp which so far has only varied 1c each way. the temp strip on the FV's have not moved and the thermometer in the water really hasn't moved but once again time will tell. I am happy so far with the results [biggrin] [biggrin] .

Cheers.

 

[ArthurW2]

Thanks for all the replies first thing first i need to speak with the bloke i bought it off on night shift tonight [devil] Hopefully all will be good and he will get it running then i can come home to some breakfast beers before sleep [biggrin]

[Otto Von Blotto]

Gotta love night shift[lol]

 

Yeah I thought about doing it like that, just controlling the ambient temp in the fridge. I also thought about sticking the probe in a glass of water inside the fridge, but I figured it's a much smaller volume of liquid, and also it's not fermenting and producing any heat so it wouldn't be a totally accurate assessment. So finally I decided to stick the probe to the side of the FV and insulate it with foam so it measures the temp of the brew itself. I tested a couple of gravity samples with a thermometer and it was pretty accurate actually. However, when I bottled the brew and stored in the fridge for carbonation I have just been controlling the ambient temp. I have it set to 20C and it generally hasn't been going below about 19.6/19.7 before it warms back up.

 

But, at the end of the day, use whatever works for you and if it works fine I don't see any reason to change it unless you feel like trying something else.[cool]