Brew belt or heat tray?

Supercell

Looking to order a cider making kit from Homebrew West and they have a choice of a brew belt or a wooden "BB Heat Tray".

Any reason I should go with one over the other, the wooden one is a few more euro but not so much that it screams out that i'm paying more for better so thought I'd ask.

rje66

Not sure what your set up is and how much brewing you do, but if you have space an old fridge with an Inkbird temp controller and heat lamp would give you very stable temperatures resulting in better fermenting.

BeerNut

I don't see the point of either. If you live in Ireland and are fermenting indoors you don't need to be adding more heat. Seems more likely to cause problems than improve the end product.

Supercell

Thanks, have been reading around and it seems the fermenting temperatures needed are pretty much the normal home range here, will leave out for now.

loyatemu

anything from 17-21C should be fine. In general slightly lower is better as at worst it will slow the fermentation down, whereas high temperatures can lead to unwanted off-flavours (probably a bigger risk with beer than cider though).

rubadub

That page mentioned

Bear in mind that fermentation is an "exothermic" process, which is a long winded way of saying that it creates heat. This can be enough to raise the temperature of the fermenter by up to 2 oC

I have both a brew belt & mat which were given to me, I use neither. I will often put blankets or old jumpers over a fermeneter so the heat it is generating itself is retained a bit more.