Controlling Fermentation Temperature

In this video we show you how to build your own fermentation chamber from a fridge. For most home brewers this one step has the biggest leap forward in the quality of beer that you can produce at home. We also talk about using a glycol chiller to maintain and manage fermentation temperatures.

 

One of the best things you an do as a home brewer if you want to improve the quality of the beer you are producing is to take control off the temperature that your yeast is fermenting at

There are  a couple of ways to do this, this is the very easy, cheap, cost effective method that we’re going to show you first of all.

We’re gong to take you through the easy steps of being able to build your own fermentation fridge.

The idea being behind this is that you have an environment to put your fermenter, and keep it at a maintained temperature so that you don’t stress the yeast. And this will improve the quality and taste of the beer that you are producing.

This is just a second hand fridge that we’ve picked up up to use. Really easy to use in that you buy a heat tube, these are usually used to heat green houses, garages. You can pick them up on Amazon or eBay for about £15. You can if you want feed the power cable through the drainage hole at the bag if you want have it nice and tidy, or you can just have it go from the front and tape the fridge door closed.

The heat tube and the fridge then we would then plug into an Inkbird temperature controller. The Inkbird we’ve mounted round the side of the fridge, plug the fridge into the cooling socket, then the heat tube into the heat plug socket. Then press and hold the set button until it flashes, set it to the temperature you want the chamber to sit at, press and hold the set button. It will then switch on the heat when it needs heat to hit 19c or the fridge it will regulate between the two based on the reading from the temperature probe that you’re going to feed inside.

The temperature probe you then put inside the fridge with the fermenter. Some will immerse it in a jar of sanitiser inside the fridge, or tape it to the side of the fermenter covered in bubble wrap, or you could use a thermowell on your fermenter and put the probe into to get a core temperature reading from the fermenter. The Inkbird is then taking a reading and maintaining the temperature  which you want it at.

The other great thing about building a fermentation fridge, you’re then able to increase the temp for a yeast clean up at the end, or if you want to cold crash it at the end at 4c, it will bring the temperature down and cold crash it and this will give you a clearer beer.

This really will change and improve the quality and standard of the beer the you are producing as a home brewer, if you’re not already controlling the temperature of your fermenting.

 

The other way that you can control fermentation temperature is using the Grainfather glycol chiller, this hooks up to the Grainfather Conical fermenter. You can actually use four of these with the chiller, all of them working at different temperatures. The glycol goes inside the double skin wall, and also inside of there is a heating element that heats the space inbetween the walls. The control from the unit on the front, you can set it and hold it a temperatures, or you can set a programme of temperature steps according to what your requirement is for your recipe/beer/yeast.