Brew Belts For Wine Making

Nokee

Hi there, I would like to make wine at home with the wine making kits sold at Home Brew West. As the only space I have is in a shed (with no heating) I was wondering if anyone has any experience in using a brew belt to help maintain the correct temperature during the fermentation process.

neoanto

Get yourself a STC-1000 on Amazon, its a temperature control unit costing a tenner or so.
The instructions that come with it for wiring aren't great so look for ones online.
But that will allow you to control the temperature of the fermenter with the brew belt.

WallsToTheBall

You can get brew belts that work just the same as the ones bought from HBW for less than half the price on ebay, just search for "brew belt".

Sure, you have to wait 2-3 weeks for it to come from Hong Kong and you almost definitely should replace the crappy plug that will be on it but they are pretty solid. I have been using 2 for months now and no issues, my friend is using one also and same story.

You also get the benefit of being able to choose output, the ones from HBW are only 30W iirc, on ebay there are various powers, if your shed is not well insulated you might need something stronger than a 30W to keep it warm enough at night. You can hook one of these up to a temp sensor as suggested or you can go the midly time-consuming route I do which is to have a thermometer sticker on the side of the fermentor and the belt plugged into a wall-plug timer and guesstimate how many hours it should be left on at night depending how cold Met Eireann claim it will be

WallsToTheBall

Another option that involves less micro-management would be a submersible fish-tank heater. You set these to a desired temperature and they turn themselves on/off as the temp goes down/up, again these are available in various power output options. I have heard mixed things about these, like the fully submersible ones invariably leaking eventually. You can get these very cheap on ebay also and probably around the same price as a HBW brew-belt from your local pet-store, probably working out a bit cheaper overall as you wouldn't need to purchase a timer.

Nokee

Thanks to all for your advice.

FYI, I have my first batch fermenting using the brew belt and the STC-1000. I had to wrap the fermenting bin with thermal insulation foil and it looks as though the temperature is being maintained correctly...

Will let you know if it is successful !

boboboland

Nokee wrote: »

Hi there, I would like to make wine at home with the wine making kits sold at Home Brew West. As the only space I have is in a shed (with no heating) I was wondering if anyone has any experience in using a brew belt to help maintain the correct temperature during the fermentation process.

I started off using a brew belt found them horrific and not very consistent. bought the immersion heater and found it excellent i know you'll prob get people on here complaining saying you can introduce bacteria and stuff like that and don't put stuff in the beer that you dont have to. But if you do what your supposed to and make sure and sterilize everything over and over again you wont have a problem.

deckie27

I have used a regular fish-tank heater
But not into the brew.

I had a large bucket.
Like this
Cost a few euro.
I put the fermenter into this added water to the bucket and placed my fish tank heater in the water.
perfectly regulated to what even temp you choose.
I used to cover with a bed quilt also to keep the heat in