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  • Fermenter cooling/heating

    Hello,
    I'm at the early stage of opening a brewery. We have 7 bbl conicals. On my homebrew conicals I heat as well as cool during fermentation. I like to ramp up a few degrees at the end to help finish. As far as I know in a brewery tanks are only chilled not heated. Is this correct? I also work at a cidery where we heat and cool but I don't believe this is the case for beer. Is the beer just allowed to free rise at the end?

  • #2
    With 7 bbl in the fermenter, the fermentation will produce all the heat you need.

    If you ever need to heat a fermenter for a "stuck ferment", you're doing something wrong.
    Timm Turrentine

    Brewerywright,
    Terminal Gravity Brewing,
    Enterprise. Oregon.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by STBC View Post
      Hello,
      I'm at the early stage of opening a brewery. We have 7 bbl conicals. On my homebrew conicals I heat as well as cool during fermentation. I like to ramp up a few degrees at the end to help finish. As far as I know in a brewery tanks are only chilled not heated. Is this correct? I also work at a cidery where we heat and cool but I don't believe this is the case for beer. Is the beer just allowed to free rise at the end?
      I keep the room temperature high enough to do a diacetyl rest. Other than that, during fermentation, yeast will create more than enough heat... once fermentation is done, the fermented beer will reach equilibrium with room temperature.

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      • #4
        If your fermenters are properly insulated, room temperature will have NO effect on the temperature of the vessel. We have two 35bbl tall, skinny ferms that stick out through the roof, so about 2/3 of their length is outside (a really bad idea as it's impossible to seal the roof around all the penetrations). We had lows below -20F this winter, and it had no effect on the temp. Same when the mercury goes over 100F.

        7 bbl is plenty big enough to generate more heat than you need.
        Timm Turrentine

        Brewerywright,
        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
        Enterprise. Oregon.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by TGTimm View Post
          If you ever need to heat a fermenter for a "stuck ferment", you're doing something wrong.
          Just to elaborate on this a little bit – we have to use to tricks like this at home because it's hard to have perfectly healthy fermentations in a homebrew setting. You should be getting fresher yeast, a more accurate pitch rate, and better wort aeration/oxygenation (no, seriously... you should know that you're accomplishing all three of these). You'll also have more stable temperatures just by virtue of having so much more liquid – it's hard to make 7 BBL's rapidly swing in temperature when you're trying, much less accidentally! This all makes for happier yeast that shouldn't need to be babied over the finish line on a typical batch.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by TGTimm View Post
            If your fermenters are properly insulated, room temperature will have NO effect on the temperature of the vessel. We have two 35bbl tall, skinny ferms that stick out through the roof, so about 2/3 of their length is outside (a really bad idea as it's impossible to seal the roof around all the penetrations). We had lows below -20F this winter, and it had no effect on the temp. Same when the mercury goes over 100F.

            7 bbl is plenty big enough to generate more heat than you need.
            That's interesting. No effect at all? For a finished gravity beer? I guess my 7bbl FVs must not be properly insulated. Ambient temps in the brewery in the summer are 70+ and in the winter are <60. When I turn off the jackets and dry hop, in the summer I definitely get a faster rise from DH start temp of 58 to ending temp -- anywhere from 65-68. In the winter, I put a heater under the cone after dry hopping and that struggles to get the temps up to ~63-64.

            The FVs are all Premier Stainless.
            Dave Cowie
            Three Forks Bakery & Brewing Company
            Nevada City, CA

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