BREWING BEER

TEMPERATURE CONTROL

I had long been thinking that wine fridge / cooler / chiller / cabinet / cellar would be a good environment for brewing beer. Many of them claim to provide a temperature range of 12c - 18c. While 12c would be ideal for most lager yeasts, ale yeasts should be fine at 18c.

The problem was that most wine fridges were prohibitively expensive. Then I saw this one an EF BC0650 at $199 (Singapore $s), which was astoundingly cheap compared with the other ones of comparable size available at the time. Another issue is that many of them have a compartment inside at the back at the bottom, to house the compressor. This would make it impossible to fit in the fermentor, except in a tall model.

Fermenting Bin in Wine Cooler.

Before I bought it I knew it would only be suitable for brewing ales in Singapore's hot climate. Despite the marketing stuff in the shop claiming to control the temperature between 12c - 18c, the small print mentions that this depends on the external ambient temperature. This model does not use a compressor but a thermoelectric heat exchanger based on the Peltier - Seebeck effect. This means that it can bring down it's internal temperature by up to about 12c below ambient air temperature. One advantage is that since there is no compressor, there is no internal compartment at the bottom to house one.

The main thing I learned from experience of using this, is that it is essential to cool the brew down to ale brewing temperatures before putting it in the cooler. I aim to cool the brew down to 18c before putting it the wine fridge. I found that when the fermentation is at it's height on about day two (48 hours from pitching the yeast), it is good to put a 1.5 litre water bottle, which has been frozen, into the wine fridge with the fermentor, for a few hours, to keep the temperature at below 22c. Once the fermentation has slowed a bit, the chiller seems to be able to keep everything at about 20c (most of the day time temperatures I have experienced when brewing have been about 32c), without additional assistance.

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