Cheap-ass Temp Control

[JakeAndBake]

So, being a Wally World employee, a student, and a guy who generally likes to spend money before he's got enough of it, I decided to do some work and make me a ghetto temp control box. Really, "make" is sort of a strong word, because all I really did was cut some styrofoam.

The box came for free from the roommates job, he gets deliveries of frozen dog food in these things. It didn't cost a dime, and I felt kinda nice about recouping the styrofoam for a useful purpose instead of letting it end up in a land fill. The measuring/cutting took all of ten minutes, and this is what I ended up with:


Basically, this is as low budget as you get. Fermenter goes into the box, ice goes in next, then you put the pieces of the lid on. The pieces are cut that way because I'd like to buy some cheap towels and give evaporative cooling a try, in an effort to make this thing work at lagering temps. Here's my fermenter being cooled down, within 3-4 hours it was under 70 degrees, and the next day was heading towards being under 60, according to the fermometer. My next step is to measure with a better device to make sure I'm getting an accurate representation of the actual temps in the box.


A shot with the fermenter in and the lid on.


It's currently in the box without any ice, because after it started heading towards 60 I pulled it out to keep things from getting too cold. I have since replaced the zip-lock bags full of ice with frozen 2-liter bottles, but the thermal mass of the liquid in the fermenter has kept it from going back over 70 degrees so far, so I just keep it in the box. If it starts getting too high, I'll chuck a 2-liter in there to cool it back down.

Here's the real challenge for me: getting this box to go the other way. I'd like to ferment some saison at some point, but for now, it works great for regular old ale fermentation. Also, this saves me money on temp control and allows me to ease into all-grain sooner than I would have gotten to.

If you're looking for one of these boxes, check pet stores, meat markets, anywhere where they receive frozen freight that isn't coming on a reefer truck. If your local Wal-Mart sells live worms, ask them to keep the box they ship them in for you, as those would work pretty well. You might have to cut out some excess styrofoam, but hey, what's a little work for what amounts to free temp control?

[coastalbrewer]

I pretty much have the same setup. Except I don't use the styro foam. I just stick the fermentor in a rubbermaid bin and swap out frozen 2-liters as needed. It works pretty well but I bet the foam would really help. I'll have to give it try.

[BruNut]

I found a simple way to maintain higher temps for fermenting this time of year in NH is to wrap a heating pad around my carboy. I set it to a low/med setting and it maintains 68-70 temps very well. I find this works great for my ales. I use a 10 Gal Igloo to keep things cooler in the summer.