Thermowell in a Carboy

This article was written as follow-up to the previous article titled “Fermentation Temperature Control”. If you have any intent on duplicating a tasty beer, you need to have some process controls in place. Simple things can change your beer such as fermentation or mash temperatures. Let’s face it…. Most of us can crush the same amount of grains for the mash and add the same amount of hops to the boil.

If you ferment your beer inside a carboy, (or even a conical) a fermentation temperature control is easy to make. The picture to the left is a caboy with a sixteen inch stainless steel thermowell and an orange colored carboy hood. Two sizes of carboy hoods are available, one for a 6.5 gallon carboy and one for a 5.0 gallon carboy. The carboy hood comes with two attachments. One is used to connect a blow-off tube. Vnyl hoses size 3/8 and 1/2 inch work great. The other attachment port is for the thermowell. Slide the thermowell into the center most port. Make sure to purchase a flared thermowell so it completes the seal and acts as a stopper. It would make a person really unhappy if you pushed your thermowell all the way into the ”soon to be beer” because the end wasn’t flared.

Love Temperature Sensor

If you are familiar with the love temperature control, you know they come with a temperature probe. The temperature probe has a black rubber-likea coating on it. Depending on what thermowell you decide to purchase, the coating causes the temperature probe to be too thick to fit. To remedy this, I removed the coating from the temperature probe using a razor knife. I have not had any issues with the probe by removing the coating.