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Beer Mash Fermentation Chamber/Box

BergenSC

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I want to create a fermentation chamber/box for my wort that fits up to 30L fermentation buckets and carboys. I want to make the inside temperature adjustable from 50-90 degrees fahrenheit using a temperature controller hooked up to a heat source and cooling source. My questions are...

1. How useful is a Fermentation chamber/box, or how useful would one be if you have never used one before?

2. How important is it to keep the yeast at a constant temperature during fermentation?

3. If it were available would you buy one?
 
1. How useful is a Fermentation chamber/box, or how useful would one be if you have never used one before?
Extremely useful!  It doesn't matter if you have used one before yet or not.  One of the biggest improvements you can make to the quality of your beer is controlling fermentation temperatures.

2. How important is it to keep the yeast at a constant temperature during fermentation?
It is critical to making consistently high quality beer.

3. If it were available would you buy one?
I would either buy one or make one!
 
Just to add to what Scott has said, the biggest improvement in my brewing came from adding temperature control to the fermentation.  I now look at brewing as making food for yeast and then having the yeast make beer for me.  The more consistent I could hold or adjust the temperature from batch to batch, the more consistent and predictable my resultant beer became.  This is especially true for those styles of beer where the yeast character is an integral part of the flavor/aroma sensations.
 
Oginme said:
Just to add to what Scott has said, the biggest improvement in my brewing came from adding temperature control to the fermentation.  I now look at brewing as making food for yeast and then having the yeast make beer for me.  The more consistent I could hold or adjust the temperature from batch to batch, the more consistent and predictable my resultant beer became.  This is especially true for those styles of beer where the yeast character is an integral part of the flavor/aroma sensations.

I agree.  It's also extremely critical for styles that are very subtle when it comes to flavor or aroma.  When there isn't much there to hide a fault, a yeast temperature issue that produces an off flavor has nothing to hide behind.  Whenever a new brewer asks what type of beer they should make first, I always suggest a Porter, because it has so much going on that a minor flaw usually becomes very well hidden.
 
I am only a beginner brewer myself but I have just bought an old fridge and also a thermostat control unit for it.
The fridge fits 2 x 25 litre fermenters in it and it cost $50 and the thermostat control I got for $60. I was looking at building the control unit myself But ended up getting it as a gift from my wife ;D  I have to say it is the bet thing I have done as now I can put my fermenter in the fridge set the temp and forget about it for a week and know that the temperature will be fine.
Now all I need to do is decide on a system to aerate my wort properly before pitching the yeast and I am covered.
I just have to brew more and learn how to improve what I am doing , A lot to improve on for me :) 
 
arctic78 said:
Now all I need to do is decide on a system to aerate my wort properly before pitching the yeast and I am covered.

Stainless spoon and a little elbow grease ought to do 'er!
 
Now all I need to do is decide on a system to aerate my wort properly before pitching the yeast and I am covered.

Pouring it back and forth between a couple buckets works for me. 
 
arctic78 said:
Now all I need to do is decide on a system to aerate my wort properly before pitching the yeast and I am covered.

Here's my solution. The bottle at right is pure oxygen. It comes packaged with a mouthpiece and is sold to athletes and pregnant women (at least here in Asia). It costs a couple bucks. The plastic tube has a sintered stone on the end. I have a bottle I use to spritz starters (pictured), and use a whole bottle for 5 gals of wort.



I have a pale ale recipe I've brewed five times, changing only one thing each brew. The third time I brewed it I aerated the wort this way and it was by far the biggest improvement I've had. It seems to have improved all my brews, but the pale ale is only one for which I can make a comparison.

 
nice little setup!  how would you describe the improvement to your pale ale?
 
Thanks Toots!

jtoots said:
how would you describe the improvement to your pale ale?

It came alive. The first time I brewed it I used WLP001 and was pleasantly surprised with the results. (I wasn't expecting much because it was my first recipe, made from leftover grains.) The second time I brewed it, and every time since, I've used US-05. I had the White Labs from a recent trip to the States, but it's not available in China so I switched. It's the same strain of yeast so I thought it would be interesting to see if it would ferment out the same as the first time. It didn't. With the first batch the yeast character was more complex, something I've since read is true of liquid yeasts. With the second batch it was more one-note. The US-05 seemed sluggish but it improved after several weeks bottle conditioning; two weeks after bottling it was yeasty, at six weeks it was just right. With the third batch the addition of the O2 brought back the greater complexity of the first, WLP001 batch. And two weeks after bottling it was good to go.

I've heard people say that adding pure O2 helps fermentations take off faster and with lots of kreusening, but I wouldn't know. I ferment in a bucket and can't see what's going on inside. And I've little interest in a "fast" ferment. Slow and steady wins the race.

And FYI, the picture I posted above isn't my pale ale. No starter for dry yeasts, just careful rehydrating and a bottle of O2 for the wort.
 
BergenSC said:
I want to create a fermentation chamber/box for my wort that fits up to 30L fermentation buckets and carboys.

For what it's worth, I did the same thing with a wine fridge for my 30 liter buckets. I opted for the fridge over building a dedicated fermentation chamber because a fridge had the added benefit of storing bottled beer at a drinkable temp.  :)  And I got the thing for cheap from a pub that was closing.  ;)





With the fridge as the cooling unit, you only have to solve for heating. I used two layers of felt and a glue gun to sandwich a filament heating wire like you'd find in an electric blanket (top pic). To insulate, I wrapped that inner layer in a 5mm-thick sheet of silicone (cheap in China) and cut and hot-glued an outer jacket for it out of thick felt, plus a silicone and felt hood to cover the lid (bottom pic). With nicer glycol-cooled conical fermentors you can separately control the cone temp to keep the yeast cake cooler than the fermenting wort, so I thought I'd mimic that by leaving the bottom exposed. (And it was less work.) The temp probe goes through a pin hole in the stopper and dangles in the middle of the wort. With the fridge kept at about 3C the wort stays within <1ºC of target temp.

The down side is I can put a new bucket in there about once every three weeks, at the fastest. I do have a couple 20-liter, big-mouth fermentors that would fit in the fridge together (albeit with fewer drinkable bottles), but I haven't yet made heating jackets for them. If I did, I could have two brews simultaneously fermenting at two separate temps. Maybe that's the next project for me and my glue gun.
 
"The bottle at right is pure oxygen. It comes packaged with a mouthpiece and is sold to athletes and pregnant women (at least here in Asia)"

I have been looking at a small pure oxygen bottle (100ltr) they cost about $40 where i live but from what i have found online they say that you should get 100 uses from that . So 1tlr per 5-6 gallon batch from all i have read that is about 1 min of aeration . Would be much nicer though if i could get the bottles cheaper but i think if it works it is still good for less than $1 a batch.

Like your fermentation setup also. i Use an old fridge for cooling then just use the normal heat strap from the HB shop. My temp. probe is inserted into the wort from a from a fitting i got that is put into my plastic fermenter then the probe is sterilized and slid through the fitting into the wort having a water tight seal. Works well.
 
I use a chest freezer plugged into a digital thermostat.  For heating I use a 60 watt light bulb.  The fermentation chamber has greatly improved repeatability, one less variable to worry about.  Temperature control is critical.  The chest freezer is nice because it allows cold crashing the beer prior to racking to a keg.
 
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