Beer Forum

I was thinking of using an aquarium heater for fermentation temp control in the carboy. Has anyone else tried to use this? Did it work?

I think there's a pretty recent thread about this around here somewhere

Yep it works well

I am too worried to put it straight in the wort.
So I have a fermenter in a larger container filled with water and the aquarium heater in that
This means I dont have to worry about keeping the heater sterile and it has a large mass so does not fluctuate too much

That is a great idea. I have used the carboy in a bucket of water during the summer to cool the wort. Putting the heater in the water would work. I also found the carboy in a bucket is great to carrying the carboys.

I use an aquarium chiller that has a switched plug on the side that controls the aquarium heater. I just dial in the temp on the chiller and it maintains perfect temperatures.

Big Tex wrote:I use an aquarium chiller that has a switched plug on the side that controls the aquarium heater. I just dial in the temp on the chiller and it maintains perfect temperatures.

How much did you get the chiller for?

I used my chiller from a decommissioned aquarium but they are all over ebay.

I just finished my first batch with a 6 gallon "Better Bottle" submerged in a 17.5 gallon "Tuff Stuff Muck Bucket" with a 1500 watt aquarium heater. The whole set-up was around $30. Once it was up and running I threw a digital thermometer into the beer. The high temp was 73 and the low was 69. Not horrible and I think I could tweak it a little bit to hold a more steady temp. One thing to keep in mind, the heater's directions say that you shouldn't try to raise the temperature of the water more than 18 degrees above ambient. Overall, I'm really happy with the set-up and it seems more temperature stable than a Brew Belt without a temp controller.