Fermentation chamber......finally

IMO, fermentation temp control is right up there with appropriate yeast pitch rates and oxygenating wort to levels appropriate for the gravity. Maybe even more important, depending on circumstances.

 

I think temp control is one of the best investments I have made and I think you'll be happy you bit the bullet. My family roots are in Clarksville (I assume that's where you are) and I can't imagine brewing there without temp control.

I find it ironic that your first beer is a saison, though, as that is one beer that people seem to let go temp wise and actually wait until summer to brew them!

 

Decent beer can be made without temperature control. Great beer in fact. That is how it was for the first generations. A really long time.

Refrigeration has only been widely available industrially for a century and a half. For residents, merely decades. And for homebrewers it has become a practical option fairly recently.

So, steady temperature control is not a requirement.
But if you want to be making great, consistent and varied beer it is necessary.

Cheers.

 

Changed my beers for the better than any other piece of equipment.

 

Equally game-changing (to me) is a thermowell and a simple aquarium thermometer. You'd be surprised how much ferm temp of different strains/worts can vary. With a ferm chamber and a sensor in the middle of the primary you be the Boss. Simple, cheap, and effective . . . best way to change the game.

 

Fwiw, I've always had temp control...just not an electronic temp controller for fermentation (used for lagering only)

 

Best heating option in my opinion is a ceramic blower heater for 9 bucks at Walmart. Used it with an inkbird and my chest freezer.

 

@PortLargo provided pictures and a detailed description of his setup in this thread starting at post 3 with a follow up in post 7.

As an alternative to the thermowell, @hoptualBrew in post 8 describes a method that includes, among other things, open fermentation during the first 3-4 days with the sanitized temp controller probe directly in the wort, with no reports of infection. Additional details of the method are included in that post.

 

I would agree. It’s either the most important thing, or tied for 1st.

The relatively recent popularity of exotic yeast that can produce fairly clean beers at higher temperatures, give homebrewers without temp control some cool alternatives that weren’t available when many of us started brewing.

True, but keep in mind that before refrigeration, beer (at least the beers we are familiar with), were fermented under specific conditions. They only were brewed seasonally during the cooler months, production was limited to a handful of geographical regions, and brewers had all sorts of tricks to cool their fermentations - water cooling, cave cellars, etc.
so although refrigeration may be relatively new, brewing temp control has been around for hundreds of years.

 

I have a cool basement up here in the north so I never used one. But since I’ve started making lagers, my chest freezer with a simple analog controller works really well.