Temperature controllers

Thanks man! I guess you dont get a lot of movement from your plug because the posts are right behind it?

Also you suggested not just hanging the probe, do you tape yours to the carboy?

 

My plugs never move. My first one has the plug on the bottom and is mounted to my fridge, never had an issue.

At this point I take the probe, place it against the side of the Better Bottle, put a piece of old cotton clothe folded over like 6 times against the probe, then tape the whole thing to the side of the fermentor. I am getting a thermowell before my next brew though so I can actually regulate the temp from the interior of the fermentor where it gets warmest.

 

Yeah, this is what I want to do. I have a thermowell and it is in my Pliny fermentor now, just not using it yet. My only temp controller is keeping my current kegs and bottles happy and cold. I think for my first temp-controlled beers I'll just be doing a swamp cooler, turning a fan on/off. We'll see how that works.

 

Pretty sweet, does that go in through the top with one of the rubber carboy toppers like these?

 

I have a question about these orange stoppers. I, like everyone else, or so it seems, uses a bung stopper or some flavor thereof. Are these orange things suitable for fermentation? It seems like they wouldn't provide the better air stoppage/sealing than a bung would provide. I would much rather use these orange carboy 'things' on my Better Bottles instead of bungs, which often have trouble staying seated if they are wet. They always want to work themselves out and you have to dry them off and and the inside of the fermentation neck to keep them seated.

 

You could if you had the right size SS tube to fit that hole. The issue comes with having a tube that has a big enough inside diameter to fit the probe, but a small enough outer diameter to fit in the hole of the carboy cap. I am probably going to drill a stopper with 2 holes for that purpose, one for the thermowell, the other for an airlock.

 

Is there an easy cheap way to control the temperature of a fermenting bucket? I'm brewing my first batch this weekend and just moved into a new apartment without a basement and am on the second floor. Any way of avoiding buying a temperature controller?

 

For your bucket grab a 10+ gallon rubbermaid tote or a cooler that will fit the bucket inside. Put the bucket inside and fill 1/2-3/4 of the way with water so that the bucket is now in a water bath. If the temp on the thermal strip on your bucket is getting too high, add a couple frozen water bottles, still going too high, add a couple more. Swap out for fresh frozen bottles as they melt and lose their power. The water bath helps to buffer the outside temps as they have to raise the temp of the water bath as well as the fermenting beer instead of just the beer. Once fermentation starts to slow and the temps start to drop down and cool off you can let it rise back up some by removing the ice elements.

 

I bought the 16" stainless steel thermowell from this site. https://www.brewershardware.com/Straight-Wall-Thermowells/
It fits perfectly with my carboy cap, and my ranco probe fits inside easily! Also a great price imo, and ships quickly.

 

Thought I might post this link on here. AHA just wrote a nice article about building up a temp controller.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pimp-my-system/build-temperature-controller/