hello everyone, im new here so forgive me if this is a repeat but i didnt see it when i searched. i have been home brewing for a few years and i live in Arizona. living in Arizona makes it hard to brew anytime i want to. the cost to keep the beer the right temp can get costly. recently my friend told me i should try using my wine fridge. my first reaction was that it only goes up to 65 degrees. he told me that his says the same but when he tested it it was a higher temp in his. so i tested mine in two ways. i got a digital hanging thermometer and it reads the same temp of 65. the second way i tested was putting a bottle of water in the fridge and checked it a few days later and the water in the bottle said it was 72. when brewing it says brew in the 68-75 average temp range. my question is, is that temp the outside air temp or the temp the liquid part of the beer inside should be? also if i put a Adhesive Thermometer on the container but i wonder if the temp would be registering the temp correctly. any ideas or help would be great. also if you do the same can you tell me what you have done to verify the temp? Thanks for any help you give
You'd want to measure the liquid temperature. A more appropriate fermenation temp range is like 64-68. Aside from certain styles, going into the 70s is going cause the yeast to throw some off flavors. I don't have any experience with the stick on therometers, so I'll leave that for some else to discuss. I'm sure you can make it work. Now, here is my two cents on the temp control, which goes a little beyond your plans... Keep in mind that fermentation actually generates heat and the temperature can spike once it really gets going. The real issue I think you are going to have is keeping it in range without having to constantly check on it and this is where an external temperature controller comes in. I have this one and recommend it (you would be able to apply a heating source in the future with that as well). I have read people have success insulating the probe against the bucket/carboy. So basically you can turn your fridge temp all the way down and it will only kick on via the controller when cooling is needed. So the question here isn't if 65 is the right temp, but rather, what is the lowest temperture that fridge can hit?
Fermometers (stick on) work fine...some here will tell you to get a thermo-well and measure the inside temp of the beer, but that is fairly anal as the exothermic heat is conducted well by the liquid...for that matter if your wine fridge ambient is 65*F that is almost perfect (compared to Arizona ambient ), imho.
Welcome to the BA site, saiyan78. This isn't precise science what we do here, but I think you may want to resolve whether your wine fridge is really 65 or 72 so that you know whether you can rely on the thermostat mechanism in the cooler. Since it sounds like you can get the temp up to at least 65 using the built-in thermostat (assuming you can verify that more accurately), then I don't think you need an external thermostat. I suggest that you set the cooler's thermostat to 65-68 to get fermentation started, and then drop it a degree or two on the next day after starting. to help offset the heat from the fermentation. Being a small chamber area (I assume this is the typical under-counter unit) you'll get rapid temp swings just by opening the door, or by the heat from fermentation, etc. so an accurate thermometer inside the fridge will guide you for your settings. (Is this also a see-thru front door so that you can monitor the thermometer readings w/o opening the door?) But your built-in thermostat will hopefully do the job to avoid or moderate these swings. By the way, what yeast do you use that says 68-75? That range seems a bit high to me.
I do agree with Mothergoose, that you can make this work with just your cooler's own thermostat, but you might find that you need to drop it more than a degree or two. For instance, my basement is typically around 60 degrees ambient and I've seen 65 degree wort drop to 64 or so after pitching, than climb back up to 70 in a couple days (10 gallon batch). You'll just have to keep an eye on it.
hello everyone, thanks for the info. it sounds like i should be fine. i will put on one of Adhesive Thermometer and keep an eye on the temp of the container and adjust it each day. luckily it has a glass front so i can see in without opening it.
Instruction by what? The instruction that came with the kit? Or who taught you? Each yeast has its own range. This is the wort temp not the ambient temp. So for example: Wyeast 1056 is 60-72 degree F https://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/american-ale Wyeast 3068 is 64-75 https://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/weihenstephan-wheat Wyeast 2007 is 48-56 (lager of course lol) https://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/pilsen-lager Wyeast 1007 55-68 https://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/german-ale As you can see there is no set range for yeasts, it depends on the strain and you get different results playing with temp, such as the 3068 will give you more banana at the higher end of the range...
Just keep in mind that the actual fermentation temp of the beer is around 5 degrees warmer than the ambient air temperature in your fermentation chamber. So if you want to ferment at 65 you'll likely need the fridge around 60.
It's funny when I started brewing I always heard 10 degrees. I'm going to have to try and measure this sometime to find out what it really is!
I've read a range from 5-10 - which probably is driven by ambient temp, gravity, and volume or even fermenting vessel. I noted my own anecdotal info earlier regarding 60 degree ambient, 64 degree wort going up to 70 within a couple days (I held it at 70 from there). It was a siason, which is a good one to test with if you are going to try, as some people will just let them free rise
Not sure if you are planning on dedicating this for fermentation full time or still plan on using it for other things, but here is what I did. I had a high end uline that went out a while back, and I just stuck it in the garage. When I decided to start looking at brewing I went out to the garage and plugged it in, still didn't work. Luckily on this one there is a dial regulator in the front on the bottom. Pulled off all the shields, removed the wires from the back and jumped them. Cranked up and got really cold, so my temp gauge was pretty much shot. So by jumping it and using an external temp controller i.e. Inkbird Itc-308, I can now make this go as cold as I want, or it will get
OMG U-Line (they are pretty expensive, hand me down from my sister in law who is a wine freak and now has a built in cellar in her house) and yes thermostat. Advantage is the thermostats on most wine fridges won't allow you to go too low, but the inkbird will allow you to try if you bypass or unhook the factory thermostat
My first thought was inspired by my own low-end generic wine fridge. It's peltier cooled, which is sexy, but it won't respond quickly enough to keep the temperature in check during the yeast's most active phase. It's fine for bottles of wine or big beers when you're not in a hurry. But if you want to chill a six pack for later today, it ain't gonna cut it (think the 'as seen on TV' six-pack coolers you plug into your cigarette lighter). If, on the other hand, your wine fridge is compressor cooled, then never mind and have a nice day
