I'm going to be brewing tomorrow, and as it's 5000 degrees outside here in Central Texas, I'll have a ghetto swamp cooler in place to keep the temps down. I currently have a stick-on Fermometer on my 6.5 gallon carboy, and a cheap digital thermometer with a stainless steel probe <http://goo.gl/yQ5se>.
I've been tinkering around trying to think of a good way to monitor the temperature using the probe as Fermometers and water submersion apparently don't mix according to some of the comments on HBT, and I think maybe I've hit on a minor tweak that might work.
Since the connection between the probe and the cable isn't water tight, I got the longest piece of electrical heat-shrink tubing I could find and stuck the probe and cable through it, covering the connection and leaving about 7" of the tubing covering the cable, and heated it to shrink it down tightly, especially around the top of the crimped probe/cable connection.
I'm planning to use a 1" diameter blowoff hose that fits snugly in the neck of my carboy, so I just dropped the probe far enough into the bottle so that the heat shrink tubing remains held in the neck of the carboy, wedged between the glass and the tubing. Since only the probe itself will be in contact with the wort, this should keep anything from getting inside the heat shrink tubing and damaging the probe connection. Of course, everything will be Star San'd to hell, so I'm not gonna worry about anything on that front.
I've attached a photo below. Anyone ever tried anything like this? Thoughts?
I've been tinkering around trying to think of a good way to monitor the temperature using the probe as Fermometers and water submersion apparently don't mix according to some of the comments on HBT, and I think maybe I've hit on a minor tweak that might work.
Since the connection between the probe and the cable isn't water tight, I got the longest piece of electrical heat-shrink tubing I could find and stuck the probe and cable through it, covering the connection and leaving about 7" of the tubing covering the cable, and heated it to shrink it down tightly, especially around the top of the crimped probe/cable connection.
I'm planning to use a 1" diameter blowoff hose that fits snugly in the neck of my carboy, so I just dropped the probe far enough into the bottle so that the heat shrink tubing remains held in the neck of the carboy, wedged between the glass and the tubing. Since only the probe itself will be in contact with the wort, this should keep anything from getting inside the heat shrink tubing and damaging the probe connection. Of course, everything will be Star San'd to hell, so I'm not gonna worry about anything on that front.
I've attached a photo below. Anyone ever tried anything like this? Thoughts?
