My probe is too large!

[jward]

Yes, it true. The temperature probe on the Ranco ETC controlling the temp. on the chest freezer turned kegerator is too large to fit into a thermo well. I was going to use that to make the new fridge I got off craigslist into a fermentation chamber. To get by I parked my brew sculpture next to the fridge to use one of its ETCs. I can't tell if it just out of spec or a different model probe.

[BrewMasterBrad]

That sucks. I know both of my probes are tight fits in my thermowells, but they do fit.

I discovered (too late) that my new Sanke fermenter from Brewers Hardware is slightly too tall to fit in my chest freezer. Plus, there is no way I can lift the full fermenter out of the freezer by myself. I can get it in there, but there it will stay until I empty it. Next time, I will put it in my kegerator/fermentation chamber.

[bwarbiany]

On a similar note to Brad's, one of the downsides to moving to the Sanke keg fermenter is dropping my batch size from 15 gallons to 10. I had hoped to be able to fit a carboy in the fermentation fridge alongside the keg, but no dice. So my 20-gallon boil kettle won't actually be used to its proper capacity

[jward]

The hits (aka user errors) keep coming. I didn't check the fermentation temperature on the way out going to work. When I got home the wort was up to 86F! When I was setting it up I had turned off the fridges thermostat. When I tested the Ranco it powered on the fridge which includes some very loud fans inside the fridge. I didn't notice the compressor hadn't started. Fermentation was not going very fast yet. I reset it to 80F to start it cooling off without dropping the yeast out and ran off to Brew at Brad's. When I got home it was down to 71F and fermenting like crazy. I had the 1550 pump control that is running the fridge set to "on" instead of "temp" to it ran the whole time I was away. I set it down to 65F. I'm surprised the yeast didn't drop out. I figure if 15F drop didn't drop them 6F more wont either. I hope it didn't get to much fruitiness or fusils.

[bwarbiany]

I got my beer all set in the fermenter, moved it over to the fridge, and got the temp controller set up. The probe in the thermowell read 66 deg F. Perfect, right? So I set it to 64 with 1 degree change, which I think is about right for this beer.

I wake up this morning, go to the garage to check it, and the fridge was off with the temp at 62. I guess the garage is colder than 64! I'm sure once fermentation takes off I won't have to worry about it, but I might have to remember in the future to route an incandescent bulb or something into the fridge along with it during the winter to ensure it's always warm enough in there to ferment.

[jward]

It's bubbling away at 65F this morning.

[maltbarley]

It was pretty darn cold last night, so it's possible but, I doubt it was cold enough to permeate your fridge and chill the wort. I bet that once the thermowell read 64, everything around it was already cooler.

[dhempy]

By just how much is the probe too large? I had that problem with my B3 mashtun thermowell. I took a file and fine sand paper and took a few thousandths off of the plastic cover and it fits now (tightly).

Dan

[jward]

I had that same thought. It's not a whole lot bigger but who know how thick that plastic is. It's back in the chest freezer for now so it's not wasted.