I have a chest freezer and I usually set the temp to 66 for my ales, but the last few beers have just been off. I think the temp is getting to high during fermentation. I purchased a thermowell this past weekend, brewers that have one, what temp do you set your fermentation chamber to? Does anyone recommend having a heater as well, I have a dual temp control. Thanks in advance.
When I ferment in a fridge, I use one controller to control the fridge's ambient temp, and another controller to control a heat wrap, wrapped around the fermenter. The fridge's controller (in cooling mode) is set several degrees lower than the desired wort temp, and its probe is suspended in the fridge. The heat wrap's controller (in heating mode) is set to the desired wort temp, and its probe is in a thermowell in the fermenter. The key is to control the wort temp, not the ambient (or not just the ambient temp).
When I used to ferment in a fridge, I placed my temperature probe against the carboy and covered it with a large, unfrozen, soft ice pack. This ice pack insulated the probe from the air temp in the fridge and more accurately read the temp of the wort. It's a simple solution that I found very effective in producing a well controlled fermentation and in turn, the beer I desired. There are plenty of other ways to control your temp, with others being more precise, but for the price of an ice pack and some tape, you can get great results.
To springboard off of the post by @TimoP, I have read some folks post that they use bubblewrap in the same manner as he details he uses an unfrozen ice pack. If you have some bubblewrap around the house, use that. Cheers!
I do not. I've never bought into the push-me/pull-me system that Vikeman describes. Instead I put an aquarium thermometer probe in my thermowell, this gives a direct readout of the wort temp. Then I manually set an ambient temp to hold the wort temp at the desired range. The wort typically varies 2 - 6 degrees above ambient during the early phase. This requires you to look at the temp and make an adjustment, usually once a day (twice at the most) . . . you'll quickly get a pretty good estimate of where to start. These guys are pretty cheap on Amazon: They are surprisingly accurate, never had one off by more than one degree. They are cheaply made, need to be replaced every couple of years. Oh yeah, you can thread the wire through the door-seal and read the temp without opening the fridge.
I ferment in a refrigerator, using a conical with thermowell, and an Inkbird ITC-308 controller. I don't have a set temperature at which I ferment every beer. I tend to adjust based on style, and/or fermentation temp range for the yeast du jour. My controller does do both cool and heat, but I don't require heat much in Southern California. I have had a few times in Jan/Feb where it just never reaches the minimum temp in a range, so I have plugged in a small space heater to the controller, and left the refrigerator door open, with the space heater a few feet out, facing into the fridge. That has been adequate to bring the temperature back up the few degrees to the low end of the temp range.
The ambient in my basement ranges from 58-64 (maybe higher in the dead of summer but it seems to be around 60 on average), I think needing a heating source very much depends on your climate and where in your house you ferment (you and OP are much wamrer locales). Sometimes I need no heating at all and just do what you noted, but other times I want to raise the temp into the 70s after the most vigorous part of fermentation has already past. To answer OP, I use only one controller, probe in thermowell, and have both cooling and heating. Vikeman's method will likely get you the most precise results, but I don't mind a shift of a degree either way (the controller has a 1 degree differential). If the ambient in the fridge is 66, it's very possible the beer temp is in the low 70s at the height of fermentation. That said, what are you tasting about these beers that is "off"?
Yes, everyone's milage may vary. We could all have that in our signatures for like every peice of advise we give.
I put the sanitized probe from the temp controller directly into the wort. I do open fermentation in a Spiedel.
I ferment in a chest freezer using two probes, one in a thermowell used for the control, the 2nd monitoring ambient only. Temp controller controls cool (freezer compressor) and heat (light bulb in a metal container). Ran the temp and heater power cables up through the drain plug which I insulated. Wort temp settles in and stays within 1 degree of what I set it for. Beer quality improved a lot since switching to temperature controlled methods.
