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Submersible Aquarium Heaters
Speaking of heaters, what about a waterbed heater? It's long enough that you could wrap it around a carboy (securing it with duct tape), it has a thermometer that you can set to a specific temp and enough power to warm a bed which should more than be enough for a carboy. Just a thought!
CAmbrose
my mates old man uses one of the submersible aquarium heaters and absolutely swears by it, i asked him about the sanitising and he just sanitises as he would anyting else.
hope that helps you out mate.
kirky
I know that the point of all this is to be able to lager and chill to serving temp in the same space, but I'd like to throw in my .02 about my setup.
In my garage, I have a standard house fridge. Nothing special.
To it, I added an analog temp controller that has a remote temp probe. I plug the analog controller into an outlet, plug the fridge into the controller and run the temp probe into the space of the fridge I want to control.
As it turns out, if I put the probe in the freezer, and set the controller to lager temps (around 34 usually), I find that the temp in my fridge section just happens to settle out at 54 degrees F. It's kinda handy becasue I can lager bottles in my freezer while I ferment lagers in primary in the fridge.
I have further found that if I set the temp controller to 38 to control the freezer, that the fridge temp then adjust to 62 which just happens to work out pretty good for fermenting ales.
All in all I'm pretty happy, but there is a catch. I live in the pacific northwest. In the summer, outside temps will get pretty warm for a few months. During that time, it gets a little warm in my garage and I find it's hard to stabalize temps. I got around this a little by wrapping my entire fridge in insulation blankets designed for hot water heaters. It helped considerably.
Just thought I'd share 
All of the heaters I've seen only have ranges in the 60's to the 90's which isn't a good range for brewers. If someone could point out one that doesn't please do.
meisterofpuppets wrote:
All of the heaters I've seen only have ranges in the 60's to the 90's which isn't a good range for brewers. If someone could point out one that doesn't please do.
Yeah, I've seen plenty of heaters that seem like they would be great, but only go as low as 20*C/68*F. On the lowest settings this would be good for ales, lagers would be out of the question. I'm still researching. I am determined to find something that works.
Rooster wrote:
meisterofpuppets wrote:
All of the heaters I've seen only have ranges in the 60's to the 90's which isn't a good range for brewers. If someone could point out one that doesn't please do.
Yeah, I've seen plenty of heaters that seem like they would be great, but only go as low as 20*C/68*F. On the lowest settings this would be good for ales, lagers would be out of the question. I'm still researching. I am determined to find something that works.
That is why you have to use a temp overide. You set the heater to its highest setting, but a thermostat cuts it off when you hit the temp you want. Its the same principle of using the chest freezer for a kegorator. The freezer goes way lower than you need, you use a thermostat controller to cut it off before it gets well below freezing.
In my garage I have a small work table I built specifically for use during brewing. (this leaves my regular workbench free for non-brewing activities). I surrounded the bottom shelf of this table with 2 inch insulated foam board to make an enclosure. Inside that I have a space heater to heat the air, and a thermostat controller that shuts off the heater when the temp gets too high. I find I have to have the ambient temp in the fermentation cabinet set to about 75F to keep the beers at 68F while they ferment.
The space heat goes from 60-90. But I have it set for full blast. Depending on the external environment, the space heat will have to cycle on/off more often to less often.
brewchez wrote:
That is why you have to use a temp overide. You set the heater to its highest setting, but a thermostat cuts it off when you hit the temp you want. Its the same principle of using the chest freezer for a kegorator. The freezer goes way lower than you need, you use a thermostat controller to cut it off before it gets well below freezing.
In my garage I have a small work table I built specifically for use during brewing. (this leaves my regular workbench free for non-brewing activities). I surrounded the bottom shelf of this table with 2 inch insulated foam board to make an enclosure. Inside that I have a space heater to heat the air, and a thermostat controller that shuts off the heater when the temp gets too high. I find I have to have the ambient temp in the fermentation cabinet set to about 75F to keep the beers at 68F while they ferment.
The space heat goes from 60-90. But I have it set for full blast. Depending on the external environment, the space heat will have to cycle on/off more often to less often.
The reason I was thinking of using the aquarium heaters was so I could keep my fermenter in a refrigerator. Your setup seems to be a little bigger than I'm looking for. The Houston area doesn't usually get cooler than 35*F in winter(and thats the overnight low temp) heating is not normally an issue. The issue for me is that I want to cool my wort to lagering temp without an ice bath. I have plenty of fridge space, but the ambient temp is 40*F or so which is too cold. I need to find a heating system that will fit in my fridge. The use of a thermostat to control the fridge is not an option for me. The thermostat attached to a fermwrap heater is a pretty expensive setup also. The aquarium heaters with the built in temp controls seemed like a good solution but the internal thermostat didn't have the range I was looking for. Now I figure I need to try to find a good thermostat for under $75 or so. The more research I do on the subject the more I am leaning towards the thermostatically controlled fermwrap heater along with a carboy shield or jacket. I think the fermwrap heater would more evenly distribute the correct temperature. One question I do have is how hot does the heating element in the submersible type heater get? Would it cook some of the beer it came in contact with? It might even kill some of the yeast if it is too hot around the heater.
Ditto, I live in Nashville where it has pretty mild winters and Hot summers I wanted to ferment In a fridge and keg at the same time. I have a Johnson controller but as of now I can only do one or the other not both. I've just settled on getting another fridge and putting it inside (maybe the bonus room can be a Homebrew sancturary) so I can ferment ales all year.
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