Fermentation Temps

My beer is a basement dweller as well. Mid to upper 60's year-round so just about right for most yeast. I'll wrap them in a couple towels or put a jacket on the carboy to keep light out and attempt to maintain temp.
 
The wife won a kegerator in a photo competition one week after we bought our own. So we use that with a heat mat stuck to the side. It's got a decent seal so we can go from below freezing to above 30C/90F. Gives us a lot of flexibility with the types of beer we can make.
 
I need a chiller for summer months and use a heating pad in the winter. This year, I got the Blichmann submersible pump and run it from a cooler with water/frozen milk jugs. Hindsight, I would have got the Anvil as it has a coil for same price, kits run about $100. Chiller worked great for an Octoberfest lager in August so works well. I'm looking into bending that coil to go in a large opening plastic fermenter as an update.

Bonus with the pump is you can also use it to recirculate ice water through an immersion wort chiller so I'm doing that to drop my boil kettle down to pitching temps. Getting low to mid 60s right out of the boil kettle into fermenter so can pitch yeast at low end of the range right away.
20200731_190349.jpg
20200129_184657.jpg
 
Last edited:
I have 2 chambers. One I built out of foam (son of fermentation chamber) and it sits in the house. Cooling with Iced milk jugs and heating with a extra seed tray heater with a thermowell. It holds pretty well. The 2nd chamber I built from a mini fridge with a 2x4 collar. Heating is controlled with a fermawrap heater. Both controlled with Inkbird 2 stage controllers. The fridge will be for lagers
 
I have a thermostatic switch on a chest freezer that fits two buckets, bigmouths or carboys and heating pad. More often, I use a portable electric radiator in a separate smaller room in the cellar for warm fermentation. Since I have a large granite basement from the 1800s the temperature is in the mid 60s year round in my grainary/fermenting rooms and this suits most of my yeasts well.
 

Back
Top