Fermenters And Stuff

[im_hoppin_mad]

ok ppl this is my first post
i need help ive been doing home brew for 4 months
now and i was told wen ya make a beer keep the temps
between 18 /28 degrees and ill be home and hosed but
i have learnt thats not the case so i need help i live in a
pretty hot house and i find it hard to keep the temps
low so does any one have ne good hint to keep the
fermenter at lower temps i can get to 26 degrees at
best then it tends to creep up to 28 /29 degrees


sumone help me

 

[fergi]

sounds like you live in queensland or NT. well the best way to keep your brew cooler is to put the fermenter in the laundry sink and fill it up with water so you have at least 10/12 inches of water around it,then every day pull out a frozen 2 litre cordial bottle and drop that in the water,you may need to do this a couple of times a day depending on the temp.try and keep your temps for ales around the 18/20 degrees.26/28 is too hot and it will make your beer have that homemade taste.i assume you dont have a spare beer fridge otherwise that would be the way to go with a temp controller.you may need to put a few bottles in at first to get the temp down to the desired temp
cheers
fergi

 

[bottlerocket]

as fergi said plus wrap a wet towel around your fermenter and keep it wet,maybey a fan blowing across it

 

[barfridge]

Instead of fergi's idea of the laundry sink (the wife needs that occasionally), I use a 50 litre plastic tub, bought from a cheapie shop for about $10. I plonk the fermenter in this, fill with water, 2x 2 litre frozen coke bottles (salted water - freezes colder, and lasts longer), then a towel over the top, with the edges in the water so it wicks to keep itself moist.

With this setup I can maintain 20-22 degrees, even on 40 degree perth days.

 

[muga]

Get a second hand fridge/chest freezer and get a thermostat that you can set to the temperature you want, it's works very well.

You can get a simple kit from jaycar (www.jaycar.com.au) that can do this for you, I have it running on my fridge at the moment and it works great.

 

[cliffo]

I made up an insulated fermenting box from polystyrene boxes that I got from a fruit & veg shop. Glued 3 on top of each other, cut out the bases on the top two then filled the gaps with expandable foam.

I throw in a couple of ice bricks before going to work in the morning then place the lid on top and replace in the evening with another couple from the freezer. Have no problems getting the temp down to between 11-14 degrees (i mainly do lagers).

The box is just wide enough to squeeze the fermenter in and place some ice bricks around it - it works a treat!!!

Here's a link to a pic:

Fermenting Box

cliffo

 

[delboy]

yep i agree with muga . I read a post on this forum not long ago titled free beer fridge ?
it seems some of the big retail chains ,eg: Harvey Normans some times pick up old fridges and freezers when they deliver new ones ?
might be a good idea to check out your local electrical store to see if they have this problem and if so they may just give you one so they dont have to dump it.
then as said buy a thermo kit from jaycar and put it all together and you will have a great fermenting unit .
i think the jaycar kits from memory are about 30 bucks and if you score a second hand refer well thats cheap for a fermenting room .
give that a go .
delboy

 

[peas_and_corn]

I'm getting a chest freezer delivered sometime this week which I'll be using as a fermentation fridge, once I get a temp controller. At the same time they will also deliver my keg fridge!! Yay!!

Anyway, a temp controlled area is great and very handy. All this year I have been obsessively checking the temperature of my fermenting beer about once every couple of hours, checking at 3 in the morning etc and driving everyone mad, seinding text messages to get people to check for me when I have a 9.00-23.30 day. So having a fermentation fridge seems like a great relief.

 

[ColdBeerLuke]

Instead of fergi's idea of the laundry sink (the wife needs that occasionally), I use a 50 litre plastic tub, bought from a cheapie shop for about $10. I plonk the fermenter in this, fill with water, 2x 2 litre frozen coke bottles (salted water - freezes colder, and lasts longer), then a towel over the top, with the edges in the water so it wicks to keep itself moist.

With this setup I can maintain 20-22 degrees, even on 40 degree perth days.

[post="86727"][/post]​

barfridge (or anyone else)...
Great idea with the salted water.
How salty do you make it? Roughly how many grams/teaspoons/or whatevers per litre?

 

[MCWB]

barfridge (or anyone else)...
Great idea with the salted water.
How salty do you make it? Roughly how many grams/teaspoons/or whatevers per litre?

[post="87529"][/post]​

Sorry, but the salted water idea is rubbish. Yes, the salt depresses the freezing point of the water, and since the heat capacity of water is about double that of ice, you get a small difference in the overall enthalpy change. However, given that they both start off at the same temperature (say -20C) and end at say 20C, the following graph demonstrates how much salt you have to add to 1 kg of water in order to see an effect.

As you can see, to achieve a 5% change in the enthalpy change over this temperature range, you need to add around 50 g :excl: of NaCl per litre of water. Unless you're adding truckloads of salt to your water it's going to make 3/4s of bugger-all difference.

N.B the above graph assumes that the specific heat capacities of the water and the salt + water solution are equal. This isn't quite true, but it's a decent approximation, as there's 0.5% difference in heat capacity at 50 g of NaCl.

 

[Stoodoo]

MCWB, nice work there

Unfortunately I have no Beer fridge that I can use to keep my ferment temperatures down, with lager/pilseners being my preferred choice. So I've done similar to what has been mentioned above, having a large plastic tub filled with water, and to that I add Ice. Yesterday I bought myself a 25m roll of plastic bubble wrap which is meant to be one of the best thermal insulators. I used to use an old queen size polyester filled quilt for insulation, but hope that the bubble wrap may keep the water cooler, longer. Oh, I also sit the plastic tub on a 2" thick piece of polystyrene foam. Up till now I have been able to consistantly keep my ferment temperature between 9-12c.

Cheers

 

[Wortgames]

Stoodoo, I don't think the bubblewrap will be any good to you for lager ferments, as the yeast generate heat and you need to carry that heat away. I've never tried it, but I suspect just starting off with a cool fermenter and insulating it will result in it overheatng itself, unless you are using some other trick to chill it. It would probably be good for keeping your fermenter warm in a cool ambient temp though.

The evaporating wet towel over the fermenter is probably the best and cheapest method, especially if you can place it in a draught or have a fan blowing at it. You could sit blocks of ice on top or rig up some sort of constant drip to help keep the towel wet.