How do you heat up your fermentors?

[BREWMASON]

I currently have 3 x 3bbl jacketed fermentors with a glycol cooling loop. We have two additional ports near the inlet & outlet to put a future heating loop but were not sure if we would need it or what everyone else is doing. Thank you in advance for your help. Any pictures can be emailed to bruehol@outlook.com.

[StephenP]

Are you sure it isn't another cooling jacket for a second zone?

[BREWMASON]

Yes, only one "zone" jacket for the entire fermentor. Wish we had some of those dual zone conical's from brewers hardware.

[TonyT]

Seriously doubt you'll need heat as long as you pitch healthy yeast and don't knockout below target fermentation temp, unless your building is super duper cold all the time.

[brain medicine]

got the old SF Bay Area temperature blues eh? cant get your belgian/hefe/saison to go since its usually mid 60s around here? i cant give you a permanent solution as i dont know exactly what you're up to, but for a simple fix its basically just a matter of bypassing the cooling loop and installing a short heating loop.

disconnect the glycol in and out loops- use a coupler and bypass the fermenter completely. now the fermenter isnt being cooled anymore.

now you just make a new heated glycol loop system to heat the fermenter.

1-heated glycol reservoir (glycol mix in an ice cooler with a pond heater?)
2- run some glycol lines from a pump in the reservoir to fermenter in a loop
3- reset your temp controller to control the new pump/reservoir

easy peasy. if you plan on doing this year round, then just make it permanent by adding some valves and a bypass loop into your regular glycol lines so you can bypass fermenter. then in between those cold bypass valves and the fermenter you can add your permanent hot glycol loop, with its own permanent on/off switches.

you could also use your hot water heater or HLT to heat the fermenter, but then you'd get some gylcol mix into your domestic water supply if you didnt clean the jacket lines like crazy. probly a bad idea.

[MadHatter]

Heating your fermenters?! Talk about first world problems. I'm lucky enough to keep mine under 25C year round, and I live in Canada.

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