Maintaining Fermentation temp??

[noodle]

Stupid question time...Sorry

How does the glycol system maintain temperature in a FV when the abmient temp is colder then the target temp?

ie - it's 60 degrees in the building and I'm trying to maintain 66 degrees in the FV.

thanks,

[dfalken]

It doesn't.

[fa50driver]

It won't. but....

Since Fermentation creates heat, you can still ferment beer at 68 F when the ambient temps are 60. We ferment at 68 with ambient temps of 55 to 60 in the winter. Luckily our yeast doesn't really need a diacetyl rest, so the decreasing temps after fermentation don't hurt.

[fa50driver]

We never tried this in the winter, but in the summer on the occasion when our compressor overheats, the heat from the pump raises the glycol temperature quite rapidly. I suspect that if someone was having trouble getting a fermenter up to fermentation temps they could shut off the compressor and allow the glycol to warm up from the pump heat. Of course you would have to manually close all of the other tanks valves so that your brites wouldn't warm up.

[noodle]

I guess it wasn't a stupid question.

thanks,

[revnatscider]

... shut off the compressor and allow the glycol to warm up from the pump heat.

How about a heat stick in the glycol bath?

[beejay]

Since we use a hot water on demand heater, we simply drain the glycol from the jacket and circulate hot water through our jackets to raise the temperatures. Thought in the winter our brewery was usually around 55-60F and we didn't need to heat tanks often. Usually the yeast did a plenty good job of holding it's temps through fermentation.

[jcwilde1]

We were told that if your tanks are insulated well enough that they always need to be cooled even if the ambient temperature is much lower. Since they generate a small amount of heat, the jacket holds it in.

We are planning on brewing ales this winter as low as 40 degrees at our location -- it will be our first time, are we misinformed?

[schlosser]

The 'Heat' is set in our brewery at 40 degrees in the winter. We have no problem with beer dropping its temp on its own during fermentation. Fermenter is still calling for cooling, just not as often as in the summer.

Dave

[lhall]

One trick to warm up a fermenter (i.e. if the solenoid stuck open all night) is to fill an empty one with hot water, turn off your glycol compressor, and then circulate the glycol through both the cold fermenter and the one with hot water. The hot water will transfer its heat to the glycol which will transfer it to the cold fermenter. Works really well.

[Taps]

What a good idea lhall !!