Well, things have moved on a little at the fledgling brewery. The latest addition is a fermentation control lid which i've called "the contraption". I'm fermenting my beers in the 80L thermobox which I also use to mash in, the contraption lets me control the temperature that my beers are fermented at. It is a custom made stainless steel lid with beerline around the edge to create a seal (not airtight but it keeps the bugs out!) it has two SS cooling coils drilled through it which are connected to a beerline chiller and a 55w aquarium heater also fitted. The whole thing is hooked up to a TC10 temperature contoller with the probe going through the lid and this submerges in the beer. Basically all that happens then is I set the desired fermenting temperature and if the wort is 1c above this it kicks the beer line chiller on which pumps icy water through the product coils until the wort reached the right temperature or if it's 1c too cold it turns on the heater until the temperature of the wort is where I want it. Pretty good eh! The whole thing works really well.
