jayjaytuner
Well-Known Member
i know about the cooling side of things, what are you using in your fermentation fridges as far as heating goes?
With my chest freezer in a 45 deg winter basement a 40 watt light bulb does the trick.
I see your from Geneva we have a place and got married on Keuka lake...love it up there...in the summer of course
Funny that this should come up now. I just finished my first ferm chamber last night. I was originally using a travel hair dryer, but after reading about a bunch of potential horror stories, I went with a ceramic heat lamp bulb. I figure a slow, steady 60 watt heat is probably better/safer than a fast hot 1875 watt heat. i have been testing the heating cooling and step features of my new Inkbird itc-310 and I am VERY happy with how everything is turning out. Brewing my first real batch for the new chamber this weekend.
Researching the same thing as well right now. Leaning towards personal heaters since I do not yet believe that the heat pads/wraps will bring my chest freezer to a reasonable temperature with it being 0C (32F) and lower outside right now. The other option I was looking at is the ceramic (non light emitting) reptile bulbs, but they seem to be more work than the personal heaters.
I have an upright freezer for a fermentation chamber in my garage. My only heat source is a 15w brew belt. I brewed saturday when the temperature in my garage was 28F. While i was brewing, i plugged the brew belt in and left it in the fermentation chamber. By the time i put the fermenter in there, the temp in the chamber rose 20 degrees. With the temp probe and the heater both attached to the fermenter, it had no problem keeping the temp at 59F (my set fermentation temperature) until fermentation kicked off.
Freezers are well insulated. A little bit of heat goes a long way in there.
I use one of these
http://www.laskoproducts.com/myheat[emoji769]-personal-heater-model-100/
Works great!
I use an old hair dryer
I used what was basically a hairdryer until I had a FIRE in my ferm chamber!
Fortunately, my temp sensor shut off the power. Lesson learned!
Now I use a ceramic reptile bulb in a std bulb outlet.
It's been functioning for several years w/o an issue.
I use a seed germination mat in mine, works great.
+1^^^ this. The old style doesn't have an auto-cutoff switch. Mine is waterproof and I just set the Fermonster or bucket right on top of the pad in my chest freezer ferm chamber. I set the pad to low/med and control with the heat side of my STC-1000+. Since the Fermenting Vessel (FV) is on top of the pad, the gentle heat is directly applied to the wort through the bottom of the FV without having to waste energy heating the rest of the chamber. EdAn older style heading pad.
I was thinking of using similar. Germination mat or maybe a reptile/pet mat.
I'd like to put it underneath the carboy, separated by a wire fridge shelf (dont want to damage the mat with a heavy carboy sliding in and out) with maybe a little airspace between.
Think this would do the trick?
Seems like a real nice space saver.
I should mention that heating will probably be a fairly rare event...most of the time my chamber will be cooling.
Just make sure the one you get is rated for "moist" heat. In other words, the pad itself (not the cloth cover) should be waterproof. Normally, it won't get wet anyway, but why take chances? EdLooks like an "old style" heating pad is easier to find. One at Walgreens is $13 and can ship free to your closest Walgreens store.
Sounds like a weiner.
I used what was basically a hairdryer...
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