The WifI Inkbird temp controller is awesome. I was able to go through all the fermentation stages for a lager and then also set it to lager temps while being 2,000 miles away. When we get home we'll have a Pilsner ready to be kegged!

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Awesome! 👍

Love that you value-add most of your videos with a technique tip or gear video. Best homebrewing channel on KZread!

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

Inserting the temperature probe inside a bottle filled with alcohol, will introduce a time lag in the response by the controller. May work. Could also cause other control issues. One alternative is to have two temperature probes - one in the freezer cavity and the other inside the actual vessel. You can also locate one probe inside the vessel, if that is physically feasible. Sanitary tri-Clover temperature probes are useful if the vessel has the appropriate port and fitting. Easy to clean.

Ancillary to temperature controllers on chest freezers, which are never frost-free that I am aware of, adding a simple computer fan to your cooling circuit will help with airflow and efficiency and can also lessen the amount of ice buildup especially when used as a keezer.

Looks like you need a Short Circuited Brewers for your fermentation cabinet!! Fermentation temp is a real factor in getting the beer you want from your yeast. Highly recommended! I've brewed Belgian strong ale but not a British strong.. Cheers Martin!!👍🍻

Hi Martin, very nice video again.. I just brewed an ESB with the inspiration of your videos.. Fuggles, you wrote as Target on the video screen..8:42min..

Hi Martin, great video as usual!

Great video as usual!

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks 😊

I love the British strong ale, brewed one like "the Trooper" but with a small twist. It has a sweet taste and also I used a lot of hops (150 grams). I didn't dry hop like the recipe said, and it ended up a bit darker than yours. But I still like it a lot !

Thanks!

Dangit Martin... you are probably the best thing about COVID... i can watch your videos MOMENTS after you upload them!

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

😂

Loving the videos Martin, great editing. I've just done my second brew day and I'm working out the kinks to make everything easier. Can you do a few videos on your set up and tips to make life easier if you get time please?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks. Welcome to brewing - it’s such a fun hobby. I try to include tips and tricks in each week’s video.

I love my Inkbird ITC-308 with the Wifi option. I can control my temperature and settings from my phone and I can do it anywhere I am.

Love your vids martin. Thnx ! Big task , brew 99 beers . Hats off to you.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

Interesting music choice lol.. good looking beer.

Tried the "probe in water" method. Found the time is takes for even a small amount of water to equalize with the air temp in fermentation fridge causes large overshoot. a large body of water, i.e 5gal of wort would be even worse. I went the Inkbird 308 route with a 60w tube heater... For and under counter size fridge the 60w heater is a little too much, the Inkbird benefits from a slower heat up time. Tube heaters tend to remain hot for some time causing overshoot. It's works with some tuning in the Inkbird settings... but if were to do it all over I'd ditch the tube heater and go for either a 20w version or a heater pad like the one shown in this video. They remain hot for much less time after they switch off and much more slowly heat the chamber... I still manage to get around a 0.8c differential, which is more than good enough for fermentation but it could be done much more efficiently. My fridge undershoots a little then the heater fights back then overshoots a little then the fridge rights back.

I have been using the Inkbird wifi controller for a while now. Last time I cold crashed my beer using my mobile phone app while I was at a quick overseas trip.

I don't like the Anvile temp controller. You have to get to the outlet area to change your temps and the outlet's not always in an easy to access area, sometimes even behind the freezer chest - so you have to move things around to get to it. I have 2 of the Inkbird controllers and really like them. For my freezer chest that I ferment in I have the Inkbird with WiFi on it. That allows me to easily change temps for each brew and also to slowly raise the temps once or twice a day near the end of fermentation to clean up diacytal, all from my phone.

I love that I'm within just a few hours of at least 3 of those stickers 😁

You have to wonder w such a wide/vague style guideline, what it actually means to be an English strong ale. Thanks for making this! Also odd music choice for brew montage...

I really enjoy your no fluff brewing style, straight to the point. If you know, how many micron is your brewing basket and what setting is your grain mill set too?.Thanks.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks. My grain mill gap is set to 0.045”. Not sure what micron the hop filter is.

Great stuff as always. I made a brew controller using a raspberryPI & arduino. Super nerdy but great fun to build! Also did you record the start very early or late in the day? You sounded like you were trying not to wake anyone up 😆

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

😄yes 6am start

Verry nice beerstyle I am brewing one at this moment!! However I am experimenting with wiskey wood chips and want to add about 300ml of real wiskey in it before botteling my beers.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Sounds delicious!

For my ferm chamber I built a brewpiless(github), its a wireless capable PID with profiles and stuff so you can auto cold crash/ramp temp(based on gravity or time or a combination of both). Just an ESP8266 and a relay and some other bits. It has endless features you can input data from a ispindel/tilt and overlay it on the graph with beer/fridge temp, output all that to brewfather on the fly aswell. You can do gravity based temp control, automate capping for pressure fermenting and loads more. You can build the enclosure however you want, hardwire it all or go modular and use mini xlr on the two sensor probes and add inline sockets for hot and cold and an AC rocker switch for the mains in. Totally customizable. Heres a picture of a current brew from the homepage of it. i.imgur.com/4whANTe.png You can see the profile page here. i.imgur.com/8gzoK9h.png

Hard to beat the Inkbird 308 unit. So simple and cheap. The WiFi version seems to be the only advantage for offsite control or monitoring. Also, that yeast pitch looked pretty small. Could be why your FG finished so high.

Martin that beer needs more time, really cloudy. Although I love your videos, Wyeast ESB produces some of the clearest beers in the shortest time. All I can think is that beer must be really really young...

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah it’s nice and clear now. May have just disturbed the keg moving it into my serving fridge.

This looks really great! Have you ever tried to copy something like guldon draac 9000?

Love your challenge! Very interesting beeing introduced to all this styles of beer. I wonder why you do not mount the probe on the fermenter because my observation is that the fermentation sometimes produces mor heat and the ambient temp differs a lot. Had some kölsch in my 15°c basement and the fermenter showed a temp of almost 20°c for the first days because of a very wild fermentation .. the beer was about 16-18°c when i put it into the fermenter so it really warmed up a lot

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Yep absolutely. The reason I don’t is I typically have multiple beers fermenting in a single chest freezer

@Stuve715

4 жыл бұрын

With a single probe controller you have to be careful with the placement of the probe to avoid overshoot. The thermal mass of the beer (that you want to control) is much greater than that of the air inside the freezer (which is what is controlled by the freezer &/ heater). So for example if you had the probe in a thermowell right inside the beer and you wanted to cool the beer from 20c to 18c, the controller will keep driving the freezer temperature down as long as the beer temperature is above the set point. The beer doesn't cool instantaneously, it lags behind the air temperature. When the beer eventually does get to 18c the freezer temperature is now much colder than that, so even though the controller has turned off the freezer the beer will keep getting colder. There will be a small differential in the controller but at some point the controller will switch on the heater to try and warm up the beer, but now it will overshoot in the opposite direction - the air heats up much quicker than the beer.

@Stuve715

4 жыл бұрын

I have a BrewPi PID controller which gets around this. The BrewPi has 2 probes, one in a thermowell inside the beer and one for freezer air temperature, and it graphs everything so you can see exactly what's happening. To get the beer from 20c to 18c the BrewPi initially drives down the temperature very cold to cool the beer as quickly as possible. However as the beer approaches 18c it cycles the freezer on and off in a controlled manner, the temperature in the freezer starts warming up but it is still drawing heat from the beer until the beer gradually settles at the setpoint without overshooting.

@Stuve715

4 жыл бұрын

Temperature overshoot - this cycle of heating and cooling the beer, arguably stresses the yeast even if the overshoot is withing the yeast's range. My recommendation for a single probe controller would be to set up the probe to measure air temperature so the freezer acts like a chamber of infinite heat capacity - it's always at the temperature you set, bearing in mind (as you point out) that during fermentation the temperature inside the beer can be several degrees warmer than the ambient inside the freezer - and unless you can measure the temperature inside the beer you have no way of knowing by how much.

@Stuve715

4 жыл бұрын

A glycol chiller as suggested by commenter david foxton would be the ultimate solution. Instead of cooling the air around the outside of the fermenter, it cools the beer directly with an immersion coil inside with virtually no lag. However for me a glycol chiller would be thousands, way more than what I've spent for all my other hombrew equipment put together.

Hahaha I love the face of Lauren that cmoon Im thirsty lets go straight to tasting it

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

😆

Is there possibly a promo code I should use with Atlantic Brew Supply that would give you credit for the referral? I’m in Charlotte, NC and we have some local guys but after checking out the website for ABS I’d MUCH rather go their direction.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for asking. No code - I just the recipe kits.

With your temp gauge setup do you worry about the increase in temp fermentation causes since you have the probe in the bottle of vodka which would give you the true temp of your wort/beer?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Yes would be better with a thermowell in the fermenter.

@jongerenski1545

4 жыл бұрын

The Homebrew Challenge love the videos. I’m a new brewer and always pick up a tip from the videos.

I have been wondering about this every week “Why the chest freezers” surely a glycol chiller would be way more space and energy efficient than the multitude of freezers. I have 4 brew buckets and 2 unitanks from 1 chiller.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

I agree. Something to look into.

@jeremyghunter

Жыл бұрын

Glycol chillers are crazy expensive and at least here in the UK there's really no second hand market. Not even for kegs, which are often flogged near to new price,

Anyone know where Martin got his adhesive heating pad for inside his ferm chamber ?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

I got that from Williams Brewing years ago.

@hubb412

4 жыл бұрын

The Homebrew Challenge cool thanks. Love your videos, keep it up!!

Martin, what's the mesh size of internal boiling kettle u r using? Can u plz tell me, is it the whole internal assembly in which u r boiling is sieve /mesh or only the lower bottom part is sieve? Wats it's size ? Can u please send me the pics?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Please take a look at the link in the description for the Clawhammer system to see more details.

Where can I find this hydrometer/densimeter device you put inside the fermenter?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

That’s a Tilt hydrometer.

Do you plan to do a video using cask ageing?thanks

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Would love to.

@joshuamsteele

4 жыл бұрын

The Homebrew Challenge - would love to see that! The chaps over at the craft beer channel gave it a crack kzread.info/dash/bejne/Z5Z5tcShd7XUeJc.html. From one Saints fan in the US to another, I’m a big fan of your channel.

Perhaps a rude question Martin: Are you rich? I have always imagined that someone with five chest freezers must be rich. Loving your videos by the way.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

3 жыл бұрын

LOL wealth judged by number of chest freezers. I’ve assembled these over the years, mostly second hand.

how do you get these recipes?

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

They’re my recipes.

@davidbeiler6364

4 жыл бұрын

The Homebrew Challenge that’s awesome. I wish I could make up my own. One day...

@jeremyghunter

Жыл бұрын

@@davidbeiler6364 It's been a couple years, have you managed to work on your own yet?

I can see you will never be able to downsize, finding enough space for 5 freezers and all your brewing gear would be a challenge.

@TheHomebrewChallenge

4 жыл бұрын

Yes true. It’s out of control at this point. 😃