I've got a heating pad and have found that its really helped keep the temperature of my brew up on those cold days. My dilemma is that at this point of time in the year everyday is cold and i can't just let the heating pad stay on all day as it'll make things to hot and its to difficult turning it on and off all the time. I've recently discovered that i can buy a temperature regulator and just wire that up to my heating pad to maintain a constant temperature.
I'm find that when i look at the on websites they all seem to be slightly different in one way or another and there is a bit of a difference in price but i don't know whather the increased price means better quality.
Money isn't really an issue. Any thoughts on which one i should purchase???
Gday Verbyla,
I use a unit called an ATC-800, which I got off ebay (The guy has an ebay store and sells a few of them, do a search). It will control both heat and cooling to 1 degree either side of my set target temperature.
I decided to go for a unit that will heat and cool after a couple of brews in Melbourne in inconsistant weather, resulting in quite large temerature flucuations, as I wasn't always home to heat or cool using other manual methods.
I have my fermenter sitting on top of a heat pad which sits inside an old fridge. The heater is connected to the heat port, and the firdge to the cool port. I find that this time of year, especially brewing ales, the fridge is hardly on at all, however it does act as a great insulating box.
I drilled a hole in the top of my fermenter and use a small rubber gromet that I got from super cheap auto, to put the temperature probe inside the fermenter into the wort. This way you are actually controlling your wort temperature (but make sure you sanitise the temperature probe first!).
Whichever way you decide to go, having recently been through this myself, I recommend you consider:
- What temperature range can the target be set to? Is this suitable for the type of beer you want to brew?
- Will it heat and cool? Just heat? Just cool? If it is single function, can it be manually switched from heat funtion to cool?
- What range either side of your target will it maintain? (normally user set, 1-5deg either side of target temp, the lower the setting the more consistant your temperature, the higher, the less on/off cycles of your equipment)
- Does it have a compressor delay feature? (Used only if you are going to use a fridge, or upgrade to one in the future). This will set the minimum time between fridge turning off and fridge turning on to increase the life of your compressor.
Hope I've helped, happy to answer any other questions.
Bumma.
