Chest Freezer, Analog Johnson, NB Heating Pad. Help!

[jagoffyinzer]

Alright so I have two chest freezers. Two analog Johnson controls and two Northern Brewer heating pads. After finding out the hard way ananalog Johnson can't do a heating pad I bought a second freezer to make a fermentation chamber. I am doing all ales so far so I obvisouly need a heating pad. The ones from NB do not come with a controller. Will a digital Johnson or a two stage Ranco control with heat pad? If I am doing more than one beer do I need more controllers? I would ideally like to control two different fermentation temps at once. How do I make this happen?

[stadelman]

The Johnson digital controller has a heating mode. You need to reconfigure it to heat.
http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=115049

A ranco dual stage can cycle power on both a heating (pad) and a cooling (freezer) appliance as needed.

To do two beers at different temps you would need to build some sort of an insulated box in the freezer. Maybe the warmer of the two beer in the box. A controller could cycle on a heating mechanism as needed. A second controller for the cooled space could cycle on the freezer as needed. I would just use two separate freezers if I wanted to do this regularly.

[jagoffyinzer]

could I use the analog Johnson to control chest freezer? then use a ranco to.control two heating pads for an ale? have one pad at 66 and another at 68?

[stadelman]

I don't think so.

First, the analog (arguably) has too large of a temp variance for good fermentation temp control. You could probably get by with it, but it's not ideal.

More importantly, the Ranco only has one temp probe. The two stages are to control a heating and cooling device. When the fermenter gets too warm, the Ranco would turn on the deep freeze, when it gets too cold, it would turn on the brew belt. Your idea would require the Ranco to have two temp probes and control two heating devices.

In order to do three temps you would need three thermostats- 1 to keep the main section cold (for a lager or the coolest of your three fermenting beers) and 1 each for the ales to turn on heating sources. You'd also want to build an insulating box for the two warmer fermenting beers. Sounds like a lot of wires!

[jagoffyinzer]

wow I thought this would be much easier. I don't understand how brewers do so many batches at the same time and control ferm temp. Guess I will stick to one at a time.

[stadelman]

Maybe someone else has a different idea or understanding of this. This is just my take on it.

You could set up two fermentation temps with reasonable ease. Two temp controllers and build an insulated box for the warmer fermentation.

As cheap (sometimes free) as refrigerators and freezers are I would just get a second. Then you can do one or more beers at each of the temps.

[MNHazmat]

An alternative would be to set the freezer at a temp 5-10 degrees colder than the desired fermentation temp, and use a themowell / controller / head pad to maintain the beer at the desired temp. No different than using heat to ferment in a cold basement. My basement (in winter) sits at a steady 55 degrees. I use a heat pad and a controller to maintain 68 degrees.

[Primevci]

These can be used for heating unplugg the unit open the cover up the black wire "near the dial for me" take that and plug into the center terminal the center terminal will have a black plastic plug in it put the black wire to that terminal place the black plug into the other terminal and there you go it will kick on to heat now...