Cheap Digital Temperature Controllers

Just recently a fellow blogging homebrewer posted an entry about his use of a Lux outlet thermostat as a temperature controller--he's using his to turn on a heater when it gets too cold to ferment.  These outlet thermostats work by turning on power to your heating or cooling device when the temperature is below or above what you have the thermostat set to.   You plug the thermostat into the wall outlet, and your heating or cooling device into the thermostat. They cost about half of what the Johnson controls that many homebrewers use for temperature control.  I have been using  two of these for a couple of years now, to control both my fermentation fridge, and my converted freezer chest kegerator/lagering chamber.  I'm surprised I haven't already written about them, but since Mark Taylor at the Backyard Brewer started the ball rolling with his post, I thought I would follow up with one of my own.

I modified both of them, because out-of-the-box, they didn't do exactly what I wanted them to.  First of all, as you can see from the photo above, the sensor wire built into them is only a few inches long, meaning you can only sense the temperature right next to the outlet.  Since I wanted to use them to control temps inside a fridge or freezer, this meant that I had to run an extension cord to the thermostat, which I would then place inside the fridge, and then plug the fridge cord into the thermostat.  The fridge cord would have to run to the outside of the fridge, where it was hard-wired in.  You could use it this way, which I did for awhile, but I realized it wasn't optimal to have a heavy duty extension cord running into the fridge, and also to have the thermostat outlet inside the fridge, operating in a cold, damp environment. 

Before I explain how I modified these thermostats, be aware that any modification will void the warranty.  Also, be sure to make sure that thermostat is unplugged, and the battery is removed before doing any work on the thermostat.  Señor Brew™ is not suggesting that you make any changes to your thermostat, nor is he responsible if you break your thermostat, or electrocute yourself or the cat or set your house on fire, or any other unfortunate event that may occur during or because of modifications you may make to your outlet thermostat.

So I added a length of cord to the sensor wire.  This was easily accomplished by cutting the sensor cord, attaching some lamp wire, and reattaching the sensor to the other end of the lamp wire.  Now, I could eliminate the extension cord, and just run the sensor wire from the outlet thermostat into the fridge.

Thermostat with sensor wires cut.

Sensor cut off

Lamp cord ends stripped

Heat shrink connectors at thermostat

Heat shrink connectors at sensor

Secondly, I wanted to use the modified freezer chest to lager my lagers, at least when I wasn't using it to serve beers.  Ideally, I wanted to set it to just above freezing, to lager my beers as cold as possible.  The problem here was that the outlet thermostats lower range was 45F.  I did find that there was an adjustment factor you could program in, adjusting the temperature plus or minus 5F.  Meaning, if you adjusted it down all the way, the thermostat would read 45F when it was actually 40F.  Of course this still wasn't good enough for me, so I decided to swap out the sensor.

I contacted an engineer at Lux via email to ask them what type of sensor was in the thermostat currently.  It turns out that it's a thermistor.  I don't have the original email, but I remember that it was an NTC thermistor, and I believe it was 50k ohms.  NTC stands for Negative Temperature Coefficient, meaning that resistance decreased at higher temperatures.  (This is opposite of how metals react, which is why computers run better when they are cold, there is less resistance in the copper circuits within them).   I did the math, and realized that if I swapped in a 30k ohm thermistor, my thermostat would think it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it truly was.  Meaning that I could set the thermostat to 53 degrees Fahrenheit, and it would continue to run the freezer until it was actually 33F.  (Incidentally, if you wanted to use this controller to heat something outside its upper range of 95F, you could swap in a higher resistance thermistor, so the thermostat would read a temperature lower than the true temperature).

Instead of cutting the sensor cord, as I did with the other thermostat, I simply opened the thermostat, removed the sensor cord and all, and swapped in another lamp cord with my 30k ohm thermistor soldered into the other end of it.

Lamp cord connected inside thermostat

30k ohm thermistor purchased from Allied Electric

New thermistor soldered in and covered with rubber

It's a Girl!

Yes, Señor Brew™ is a proud papa! As you can see, from the bottle label above, Tesla Marie was born 2 days ago. She and her mother are both healthy and happy.

Of course, being a homebrewer, I brewed a big batch of ale in anticipation--something I could give out instead of cigars. I wanted something that was flavorful, but would appeal to a wide range of people. I decided to go with a full flavored, yet lighter-bodied blonde ale. The recipe is below with notes:

Tesla Marie Honey Blonde Ale (12 gallons)

Water
1/3 Redondo Beach Well Water (treated with campden tab to neutralize chloramine)
2/3 Reverse Osmosis Water
Gypsum added to mash to lower pH

Grains
10.5 lbs pale malt (base malt)
4 lbs vienna malt (for extra malty-biscuity flavor)
4 llbs rice (to lighten the body in compensation for the vienna malt)
3 lbs honey (for complexity of flavor, and also to lighten the body)

Mash Schedule (step mash, with cereal (rice) mash addition to raise temp)

143F for 20 minutes
boiling rice was then added to raise temp to
154F for 4 hours (due to break taken to tour the hospital where Tesla would be born)

Hop Additions during 60 minute boil

1.8 oz Magnum 10.3% AA 60 min (bittering--wanted a slightly bitter beer)
0.5 oz Williamette 15 min (flavoring--adds a bit of earthiness)
0.5 oz Hallertau 15 min (flavoring--noble hop, reflects her German heritage)
0.5 oz Williamette 0 min (aroma)
0.5 oz Hallertau 0 min (aroma)

OG 1.058 F.G. 1.010


ABV 6.3% (pretty strong for a blonde, due to honey addition)

Yeast Wyeast 1272 (adds a touch of fruitiness to the fermentation)

fermented primary 13 days at 68F
secondary 7 days at 70F
cold conditioned and force carbonated in keg 7 days at 45
bottled from keg with counterpressure filler

Ahhh...Screw It!

Yes, screw it. As in screw-top bottles. I'm building up my collection of empty bottles because I'm going to bottle my first brew in the Redondo Beach brewery instead of kegging it. We had a little shindig here, a housewarming party if you will, and I bought an assortment of beers for the guests. I thought I could save the bottles and use them to bottle the first brew.

Well, I thought wrong. It turns out some of the craft/import beers I bought use screw top bottles. Screw tops are not recommended for bottling homebrew because of breakage and sealing issues. So now I'm screwed. Well not really. I'll just recycle the screw top bottles and build up my stash some other way.

Just as a point of reference, so I don't buy them again, at least when I'm short on bottles:

Wingwalker
Tecate

I'll add to this list as I run across more. Of course I'm not even going to list BudMillerCoors, because all their bottles are screw tops. Ahhhh...Screw It!

Redondo Beach Water Update

It looks like I wasn't looking at the full report, viewable here as a PDF, which does have most of the information necessary to brew. The only data point missing, alkalinity as expressed by ppm of CaCO3, was provided by Jackie, my helpful California Water Supply water quality specialist.

So here is the relevant data on Redondo Beach groundwater (ppm):

• Calcium: 150
• Magnesium 38
• Alkalinity 153
• Sodium 120
• Chloride 348
• Sulfate 150

According to the CWS website, the high Sodium and Chloride levels come from seawater influences. Seawater is salty? And it influences the groundwater supply in a beach town? Who would have guessed?

Water, water, everywhere...

So now that Noble Square Brewing is in a new location, we have to take in consideration our new environment. And for brewing beer, that means water. Señor Brew™ checked out the California Water Service Company's website to see what the water chemistry in Redondo Beach looked like.

The report on the site says our water is a mix of groundwater and purchased surface water, and gives different readings for each. Unfortunately, it doesn't say what the mix is, and doesn't say if it changes throughout the year. Luckily, the Noble Square Brewery is now located right next door to a well, and the storage tanks for the well (pictured in the title photo for this post). The water guys stop by next door regularly, and Señor Brew™ was able to confirm that my water is always 100% groundwater, except for the rare occasions that the well is shut down.

Unfortunately, there are a number of "not applicables" listed for important chemical components of the groundwater, such as calcium. Señor Brew™ has been playing phone tag with a water quality specialist for CWS, and has yet to determine what the chemical composition of our water is. Once we find out, we'll post it here, so other brewers in Redondo/Hermosa Beach that are on groundwater don't have to jump through hoops to find out, like Señor Brew™ has.

One thing we are able to determine from the site is that we are super high in chlorides, with an average count of just under 350 parts per million. It looks like we're going to have to purchase water that is free of chlorides, and dilute the tap water to get that count down. It also looks like we're going to have to treat the water to get rid of the chloramine used to sanitize it.

Noble Square Brewing is Back!

Yes, after a five month hiatus, Noble Square Brewing, the blog and the home brewery is back. I apologize to all the dedicated readers (I think we were up in the double digits), but as often is the case, life intruded on brewing and blogging about brewing.

While I was gone, it appears that blog became an interesting place for some of our Asian readers to post comments. (I'm going to clean those up, once I remember how--I have a feeling they contain links to sites you don't want to visit).

So what happened? Why did Señor Brew™, and Noble Square brewing take the hiatus in the first place? Well, a whole lotta stuff happened:

1. New Baby on the way-- My wife, who you may have seen in such ads for my brews such as Red on Head, is 7 months pregnant. This will be our first child, and I'm already a super proud papa. She's due on Father's Day, June 20th, so if the baby arrives on time or early, I'm going to have the best Father's Day present ever.


2. New Job--I switched careers to a related field, but it's still a big change, and I'm now a rookie in the new job after being a veteran in the old. I feel like I know what I'm doing about 90% of the time, which is way better than how I felt a few short months ago.


3. New City--Yes, Noble Square Brewing has pulled up roots from the Noble Square neighborhood of Chicago to move all the way across the country to lovely Redondo Beach, California. No, we are not changing the name to Redondo Beach Brewing, for a couple of reasons. One, the name is already taken. Two, we're staying true to our roots, and remembering where it all started. I have changed the "Is it brewing weather?" section in the sidebar to reflect the new location, and the logo might change. Stay tuned.

With all of these changes going on, I don't know how often I'll be brewing in the future. I do know that I'll try to post here at least once a week, and I do intend to get have a brew ready by the due date so I can give it out instead of cigars. Thank you if you were still following this blog in the hopes that it would be resurrected. Noble Square Brewing is back.

Dunkel update

I finally transferred my Dunkel to secondary and I took a taste and a gravity reading. It's at 1.017, which is too high. It doesn't taste too sweet though, maybe that the decoction mash created an abundance of unfermentable dextrins. It's only 1 point above the high end of the scale according to the BJCP.org, so it's probably alright. It might even drop another point in secondary or while lagering.

It does have a bit of astringency though. I know if you sparge too hot you can get an astringent taste, I wonder why a decoction doesn't cause the same problem. Maybe because the pH is lower during the decoction than the sparge? This beer is still young though, I'm hoping that this off flavor fades over the next five weeks that it will be in secondary and lagering stages.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I used my brewing burner and my old brew pot today, but not for brewing beer. I added three gallons of peanut oil and one 12 lb turkey. Deep fried at 350F for 40 minutes. It turned out delicious.

I also tasted the first sample of my Xmas lager, which has been lagering for about a month now. It is also delicious--like dessert in a glass. I'll have to post the recipe later, if I haven't already done so in an earlier post.