Recommendations for monitoring fermentation temperature

I've been pleased with the Tilt hydrometer. Not the cheapest solution, but it gives you a lot of insights into what your beer is doing during fermentation.

 

I just take a piece of bubble wrap and bungee cord an inbird Thermometer probe to the outside of the container. I generally just assume that it’s about 5 degrees hotter in the fermenter. I wouldn’t be drilling holes and sticking stuff into your wort as oxygen and contamination can get in.

just attempt to keep ambient temperature controlled in the room and around 60 for clean ale styles and 65-70 for Belgian ale styles.

 

Buy yourself a fermometer and place it on your bucket:


https://www.morebeer.com/products/fermometer-adhesive-thermometer.html

 

Better yet, buy a stainless thermowell (under 20 bucks) and silicone grommet (makes it airtight) and tread the probe of a thermometer (I use an aquarium thermo) down to bottom. Once calibrated, you are reading direct temp of middle of wort/beer . . . just like a commercial brewery.

 

It's one thing to monitor the fermentation temp, but it's another thing to do something to keep the monitored temp within a couple degrees of your target. If you've got the space get yourself an old fridge or chest freezer and create a fermentation chamber. Using an external thermostat you just need to set the temp and forget it. Well, I don't forget it because I do keep some insurance that the temp stays where I set the thermometer dial (I use an old Johnson Controls unit that's analog, but Inkbird is the brand of the popular digital device nowadays) by having a small spring thermometer inside the fridge.

If you think you'll ever brew a lager, this is what you'll need to ferment and then lager the beer at the required low temps. Plus my 'fermentation chamber' also serves as my beer fridge which leaves more room for food in the kitchen fridge.

 

I second the Tilt. I have a fermenter with a thermowell with the inkbird thermocouple reading the middle of the beer and it is a bang on match always. Of course, it can be calibrated but I haven’t needed to.

 

I like this approach, and have used it myself, but I always wondered how accurate it really is? The thermowell is completely open to the outside air, and air is not a great conductor of the wort temperature, so the temperature in the well is likely modified by this outside air temperature. Adding water to the well would make it far more accurate (since water is a far better conductor of temperature), assuming the end of the temperature probe is water proof.

 

Yes, adding about a tablespoon of water is just enough to cover the sensor part of the temp probe. After a few minutes it will equalize with wort/beer temp and not change with air temp above. When I do grav readings I used to measure actual beer temp with Thermapen and it was spot-on, so accurate I don't worry about it anymore. The weak point is reliability of the aquarium gauges. They're accurate, as verified by Thermapen; never off by more than one degree, usually ½ degree or less. But they're really cheap-ass, never had one last more than two years. But at 5 bucks each that's doable . . . I usually buy a two-pack on Amazon. Here's my current one, it's identical to Big Boy:

For @KPlen , which method did you decide on?

 

If you want to get fancy you can get something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Elitech-Tlog...uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

You can check the temp from your phone. If the software is good maybe even get alerts if it goes out of spec. Much cheaper than Tilt.

 

I checked the comments below the description and there was this question:

Question:
Can the external sensor be submerged in water for long periods of time to monitor the temperature of a water tank?
Answer:
No.

 

Oops, sorry I didn't do the due dilligence. There are plenty of similar models that have a fully submersible thermocouple, or you can buy one separately. They are pretty cheap

 

Inkbird has a couple of models that'll do the trick. On Black Friday I picked up a WiFi model that's PDG, even better than Bluetooth. With app/cloud you can check temp in your thermowell even when absent . . . I mean you could go to a *****-house and view the temp on your phone. Brewing better beer through technology.

 

I have used that same Amazon aquarium thermometer to get a read for old walk in coolers that don't have a digital display. Wow they are crappy as AF but like you said, cheap. So buy two. Not a very robust product. I think it's ok in this application.
They do work well. Buy two.

Cheers