heating a fermentation fridge

[Chupa LaHomebrew]

+1 for a regular drug-store heating pad strapped to the outside of the carboy, hooked in through the thermostat.
It can get too cold even for lager primaries in my garage in the winter.

[mabrungard]

A regular heating pad that you can buy from the drug store works for me. I just through it into my fermenter chamber and let the chamber's normal cooling circuit keep the temp from getting too high. You need to buy a heating pad that doesn't have an automatic timed cutoff.

If I'm not mistaken, these pads can put out as much as 1500 watts, but most of them have adjustable power settings. I think a pad is much better than a light bulb since all the power is converted to heat instead of some converted to light. No skunking worries either!

[bufordsbest]

i ended up buying a little space heater and set it to low and ran it to my 2 stage ranco. it's been down to freezing in my garage already and this setup is working great.

when the heater does come on it's only for about 2min and then it's good to go for another couple hours.

[Whitebeard_Brewer]

Do you have the temp probe inside some sort of container?? or the beer?? If not, and it is hanging in the free air, all you are doing is warming the air in the fridge...Otherwise, I find it hard to believe that you are raising the temp of 5-6 gallons of anything in 2 minutes of heating.

[grainman]

Do you have the temp probe inside some sort of container?? or the beer?? If not, and it is hanging in the free air, all you are doing is warming the air in the fridge...Otherwise, I find it hard to believe that you are raising the temp of 5-6 gallons of anything in 2 minutes of heating.

I tape the probe to the side of the carboy , then tape insulation which covers the probe on top.... Seems to work pretty well for me since all the heating / cooling of my freezer is stricly based on the temp of the beer and not the air in the freezer. That way the increase in beer temp due to fermentation is accounted for... And the beer temp is stable.A lot of people use thermowells which actually go in the beer and your probe goes into the thermowell.... It's supposedly more accurate, but I've never used one, so I don't really know.I did do a little experiment where I used a bucket of water and checked the water temp vs the temp with the probe taped to the outside of the bucket and the difference was 1 degree. So for me it was a negligable difference.

[bufordsbest]

Do you have the temp probe inside some sort of container?? or the beer?? If not, and it is hanging in the free air, all you are doing is warming the air in the fridge...Otherwise, I find it hard to believe that you are raising the temp of 5-6 gallons of anything in 2 minutes of heating.

i have it taped to the side of the carboy with some insulation over top. i might be a little off with the 1-2min remark, it could be a bit longer. i do have my ranco set to +/-1F so it shouldn't take too much to get it back to ideal temperature.

i've also got a fermometer stuck to the side of the carboy and it's giving me similar readings as the ranco.

[grainman]

Do you have the temp probe inside some sort of container?? or the beer?? If not, and it is hanging in the free air, all you are doing is warming the air in the fridge...Otherwise, I find it hard to believe that you are raising the temp of 5-6 gallons of anything in 2 minutes of heating.

i have it taped to the side of the carboy with some insulation over top. i might be a little off with the 1-2min remark, it could be a bit longer. i do have my ranco set to +/-1F so it shouldn't take too much to get it back to ideal temperature.

i've also got a fermometer stuck to the side of the carboy and it's giving me similar readings as the ranco.

yeah, I`m not sure if it`s a perfect system but, I know it works well for me, and I have not had any fermentation temp issues since doing it that way....I also keep a 1 degree differential and it seems to work fine without an excessive amount of cycling. The ranco 2 stage is the shit though....kind of makes me feel like god a little having so much control over the yeast. Make sure to check the ranco temp probe against a known good thermometer to make sure it`s not off, or if it is off you can adjust for the difference.

[bufordsbest]

the ranco is def the best piece of brewing equipment i've purchased.