How many of you store your fermentation chamber (chest freezer) in the garage, and live in a climate where the winter’s are cold? Now mind you, I don’t live in the Northern U.S., however my nights will get to 19 degrees. This poses an issue when you are using a chest freezer, the garage, and you need to maintain at temp around 68 degrees.

Up until now, I’ve been putting warm water in my extra carboy and other jugs, then placing them in the chamber. This brings the temps up and I think its been working ‘ok’, however I want it to be more stable than that.

So…I started searching around. There are many posts about the topic and it seems as though there are many ways to go about it. Most of them I think are clunky, even to the point of point a blow dryer in the freezer. The various ways I came across all seemed to work for that person, but I wanted something different.

After reading about reptile heaters, I decided to look at a pet store. There, I came across a Top Fin Mini Heater. This 7.5 watt submersible heater was geared toward heating 1-2 gallon fish tanks to about 75 degrees +/-. I figured it would be worth a shot, if I placed it in a jug of water, and then in the freezer.

Of course, I had to test it in the house first. I placed it in a 32oz jug of 55 degree water and several hours later it hat hit 88/90 degrees. With a 7 cubic foot freezer, a jug of water with a heating element, I hope it is enough to maintain the freezer at least around 68 degrees.

I will update my results tomorrow…I may need to go up to the 10w, or who knows, maybe even the 50w heater.