Temperature Control

[alwilson]

Hi guys,

I spent Saturday ruining a beer with a crappy auto syphon, we were bottling, and the syphon just pumped air into the beer, and wouldnt keep a syphon going for more than 1 bottle, infact some bottles needed two pumps (and more air) on the syphon. Anyway, thats neither here nor there as I have a bottling stick on order now.

However, during bottling I noticed a rubbery smell from the fermentor, I've searched on here and it seems to be caused by an infection or fermenting too high. We were very careful with sanitizing, but who knows, will know in a couple of weeks whether its drinkable or not - we also didnt prime 6 bottles as an experiment. Anyway im waffling, the question is:

Assuming the rubbery aroma is from fermenting too high, what do you guys use to control fermenting temperature?

thanks alot,
Alex

[floydmeddler]

Most common is a temperature controlled fridge. This is interesting too: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33756

[Wolfy]

Assuming the rubbery aroma is from fermenting too high, what do you guys use to control fermenting temperature?

You can't go past a digital temperature controller hooked up to a fridge, however it's not the cheapest option.

A cheap and effective way of controlling the fermentation temperature is by using a water-bath - which works well in the bath-tub or laundry sink, or a plastic tub that is a little larger than your fermenter.
Fill the bath up with water, and swap frozen water-filled-soft-drink bottles as required. How many soft drink bottles you need to use and how often depends mostly on the ambient temperature, but the larger mass of water and the regular addition of frozen bottles usually keep the fermenter at a very stable temp.

If your ambient temperature is not too much higher than where you would like to ferment at, you can cover the fermenter with wet towels (and optionally use a fan to blow air over it), a water store either ontop of the fermenter or in a tray under it, will help to keep the towels constantly wet and the fermenter a bit cooler than it would be normally.

[raiderman]

I've been using the bath and now we have a big sink, the sink to keep the ferment cool for years. In this kind of weather, 31 on Sat its the only way to have a chance of stopping the ferment racing and leaving a thin weak undrinkable beer. The only drawback is the wife seems to think baths and sinks have better uses than cooling beer, women eh!

[padley1985]

buy one of these http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?a ... =477376994 there the perfert size