Do you ferment in glass carboys, plugging the tight-necked hole with a rubber bung? If so, that's the confusion. Most fish tank heaters will not fit through that hole.surfer69 wrote:...Gonna drill a hole in the rubber bung and feeed cable through there & drop em straight into the FV & try it that way...
Ditch and others (myself included whenever I intend to use a fishtank heater) ferment in plastic buckets, so there's no restrictive opening. Ditch is right, of course, there is no need to worry about a perfect seal or pressurized air-lock during primary fermentation. In fact, there are flavour advantages to open fermentation if you can get away with it. There is so much CO2 continuously blasting outward during the first most active days, that nothing else has a chance to blow in and infect your batch. Once fermentation slows-down, it's a good idea to seal it up, the heater is less necessary at that point anyway, cold-conditioning becomes a good thing and will clean-up most undesireable esters and phenols over time. None of that is a concern for Ditch because he will have already drunk it up and brewed three more batches in the meantime!
