Fermentation temperature control!

Yeah, that's not good at all.

I guess that there are three approaches. A refrigerator/chamber, wrap coils around the conical and run glycol through it or make an immersion chiller.

What conical is it?

 

Cost effective way, built it your self using a dorm fridge, wood to build a box, insulation to keep the temp, and a temp controller to set the temp. There is a bunch of info on homebrew talk in the DIY section. I just built my temp controller and use a small 5 cu. ft. chest freezer as the chamber. Holding temp between 66 and 68 without a problem.

 

82F? ouch. ideally an upright fridge or freezer w/ temp controller. no need to anything more fancy than that w/ that size fermenter.

 

Here how not to do it:



It dropped the temps about 10 degrees, same situation I was at about 80 after 1.5 days of fermentation and needed to get it cool on the cheap. But seriously I need an upright freezer and a temp controller lol.

 

If you've got that much thermal mass there, it would be best to take the temp of the fermenting wort itself, as you can easily get major temperature differentials within the wort. For my 5 gallon batches, I keep the probe attached to the outside with insulation to keep the cold air away...

 

Leave the beer in primary a long time and it will clean up a lot of the fusels. I had an imperial stout(1.110 OG) that got up to 85F for at least a day. It hit FG in 2 weeks but tasted like kerosene. 2 more weeks in primary and all the kerosene flavors were gone, the beer was delicious.
A for a fermentation chamber I built this for my big conical. I can keep my internal temps as low as 55F in my 100F garage using the thermowell.

 

That looks like a window AC for the cooling, right? What temp control unit do you use, and can it take the start up spike?

Have an old AC unit sitting in the basement. Might put it to work.

 

Let us know how you like it. I have their kettle and like it.

 

Yikes 82F is pretty hot, any reason you couldnt have added all that honey after a majority of the fermenation has died down? It would really help quite a bit with the temperature.

 

It's just a $100 8000BTU unit from Home Depot. I've used a Johnson controller with it, now I have a 2 stage(Ranco possibly) from morebeer.com, and I've never had issues with either of them.
The next one I build will be from a dead upright freezer, it will be better insulated and the door will seal better. But I've been using this one for about 4 years now and it works well enough.

 

Thanks. I might do something like this for fermenting lagers in the summer. Chest freezer is full of beer right now.